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
grief mean names
Grief reconfigures time, its length, its texture, its function: one day means no more than the next, so why have they been picked out and given separate names?
tragedy farce doe
Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.
book writing doe
Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well enough alone? Why aren't the books enough?
wife mistress paper
As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.
book reading discovery
Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.
art self cities
Paris is certainly one of the most boastful of cities, and you could argue that it has had a lot to boast about: at various times the European centre of power, of civilisation, of the arts, and (self-advertisingly, at least) of love.
stars asking-why paris
Iconic Paris tells us: here are our three-star attractions, go thou and marvel. And so we gaze obediently at what we are told to gaze at, without exactly asking why.
art order elements
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.
dubious influence sometimes
In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.
writing ideas people
I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.
book democrat term
I'm a complete democrat in terms of who buys my books.
self survival instinct
I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.
thinking morbid fear-of-death
I am death-fearing. I don't think I'm morbid. That seems to me a fear of death that goes beyond the rational. Whereas it seems to me to be entirely rational to fear death!
grief patterns firsts
Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.