Julian Barnes Quotes

107 Sourced Quotes

Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction.

Julian Barnes
A couple's first task, it has always seemed to me, is to solve the problem of breakfast; if this can be worked out amicably, most other difficulties can too.

Julian Barnes
In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.

Julian Barnes
Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

Julian Barnes
Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.

Julian Barnes
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.

Julian Barnes
We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we can't understand time, can't grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history--even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it?

Julian Barnes
I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious, I really hate it.

Julian Barnes
Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.

Julian Barnes
In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.

Julian Barnes
Is any novelist going to recognize the moment when he or she has nothing more to say? It is a brave thing to admit. And since as a professional writer you are full of anxiety anyway, you could easily misread the signs.

Julian Barnes
To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness.

Julian Barnes
If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what caused me to be like this, it's not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details.

Julian Barnes
But that's one advantage of fiction, you can speed up time.

Julian Barnes
But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book.

Julian Barnes
You grew old first not in your own eyes, but in other people's eyes; then, slowly, you agreed with their opinion of you.

Julian Barnes
Writers of either gender ought to be able to do the opposite sex-that's one basic test of competence, after all.

Julian Barnes