English writer (1946- )
Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got.
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
I don't believe in God, but I miss him.
JULIAN BARNES
Conversations with Julian Barnes
No reason at all why one should go on writing just for the sake of it. I think it is very important to stop when you haven’t got anything to say.
JULIAN BARNES
The Paris Review, winter 2000
Women were brought up to believe that men were the answer. They weren't. They weren't even one of the questions.
JULIAN BARNES
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
But I don't remember. I won't remember. Memory is an act of will, and so is forgetting.
JULIAN BARNES
Talking It Over
Now, Stuart, as you will discover if you have not done so already, believes that the principal raison d'etre of food is to conceal from public view the hideous pattern on the plate beneath.
JULIAN BARNES
Talking It Over
A pier is a disappointed bridge.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
Love is just a system for getting someone to call you Darling after sex.
JULIAN BARNES
Talking It Over
History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded in ebullient despatches as the enemy falls back; then the beginning of a long, morale-sapping trudge with rations getting shorter and the first snowflakes upon your face. The enemy burns Moscow and you yield to General January, whose fingernails are very icicles. Bitter retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually you fall beneath a boy-gunner's grapeshot while crossing some Polish river not even marked on your general's map.
JULIAN BARNES
Talking It Over
Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
There's nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius.
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
Whisky, I find, helps clarity of thought. And reduces pain. It has the additional virtue of making you drunk or, if taken in sufficient quantity, very drunk.
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness -- though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
[Literature is] a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts.
JULIAN BARNES
The Paris Review, winter 2000