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
regret thinking ignorant
When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the young applaud the most insignificant improvements … while remaining heedless of the world’s barbarism. I don’t say things have got worse; I merely say the young wouldn’t notice if they had. The old times were good because then we were young, and ignorant of how ignorant the young can be.
taken may greater
What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.
anxiety firsts usual
In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety.
book mind way
The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable.
depression spring levels
The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity.
writing fiction world
When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world
sex grief hands
Early in life, the world divides crudely into those who have had sex and those who haven't. Later, into those who have known love, and those who haven't. Later still - at least, if we are lucky (or, on the other hand, unlucky) - it divides into those who have endured grief, and those who haven't. These divisions are absolute; they are tropics we cross.
lazy reader
There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were.
psychics giving afar
To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.
character people known
Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.
lying self-delusion
History is the lies of the victors,
writing literature realizing
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.
grief fall writing
I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind.
selfish good-love writing
Poets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible ‘I’…. Then again, poets seem able to turn bad love – selfish, shitty love – into good love poetry. Prose writers lack this power of admirable, dishonest transformation. We can only turn bad love into prose about bad love. So we are envious (and slightly distrustful) when poets talk to us of love.