Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes
Julian Patrick Barnesis an English writer. Barnes won the Man Booker Prize for his book The Sense of an Ending, and three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: Flaubert's Parrot, England, England, and Arthur & George. He has also written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. In addition to novels, Barnes has published collections of essays and short stories...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 January 1946
important lines speak
Do we tend to recall the most important parts of a novel or those that speak most directly to us, the truest lines or the flashiest ones?
book way doe
But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book.
giving decision enough-time
Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.
stories
In life, every ending is just the start of another story.
book grind promotion
Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from its clutches.
past looks faults
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.
beautiful lying literature
[Literature is] a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts.
heart mean able
There is a German word, Sehnsucht, which has no English equivalent; it means 'the longing for something'. It has Romantic and mystical connotations; C.S. Lewis defined it as the 'inconsolable longing' in the human heart for 'we know not what'. It seems rather German to be able to specify the unspecifiable. The longing for something - or, in our case, for someone.
couple tasks breakfast
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.
eye people suffering
People in love, it is well known, suffer extreme conceptual delusions, the most common of these being that other people find your condition as thrilling and eye-watering as you do yourselves.
hate way serious
I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious, I really hate it.
wine blessing global-warming
Global warming is more of a blessing than a curse.
photography love-is magic
Because love is the meeting point of truth and magic. Truth, as in photography; magic, as in ballooning.
writing thinking fiction
Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction.