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
suicide opposites light
I have at times tried to imagine the despair which leads to suicide, attempted to conjure up the slew and slop of darkness in which only death appears as a pinprick of light: in other words, the exact opposite of the normal condition of life.
heart trouble
One of the troubles is this: the heart isn't heart-shaped.
historical littles moments
The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.
reader uncomplicated ifs
If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.
historian happened
History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us.
congratulations mean self
Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity? Are you sure you aren’t treating yourself to easy self-congratulation, seeking approval, making certain you’re on the right side?
disappointment bridges piers
A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.
pretending artifice
Wisdom consists partly in not pretending anymore, in discarding artifice.
real skeletons people
Sometimes you find the panel, but it doesn’t open; sometimes it opens, and your gaze meets nothing but a mouse skeleton. But at least you’ve looked. That’s the real distinction between people: not between those who have secrets and those who don’t, but between those who want to know everything and those who don’t. This search is a sign of love I maintain.
love-is perhaps-love essentials
Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.
men desire want
If a man cannot tell what he wants to do, then he must find out what he ought to do. If desire has become complicated, then hold fast to duty.
echoes soul mind
Did you know that there is no exact rhyme in the Russian language for the word 'pravda'? Ponder and weigh this insufficiency in your mind. Doesn't that just echo down the canyons of your soul?
love-you order names
And that was all the part of it - the way you were obliged to live. You stifled a groan, you lied about your love, you deceived your legal wife, and all in the name of honour. That was the damned paradox of it - in order to behave well, you have to behave badly.
genius syphilis claims
WHORES. Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius.