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
home broken long
This was long before the term 'single-parent family' came into use; back then it was a 'broken home'...
stars pride long
Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear.
long done moments
You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?
loss thinking long
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.
historical luxurious oyster sides sixties throat touching
The Sixties were an oyster decade: slippery, luxurious and reportedly aphrodisiac they slipped down the historical throat without touching the sides
happiness happy secret
The secret of happiness is to be happy already
counts defeat easily frailty full life quite work
The writer's life is full of frailty and defeat like any other life. What counts is the work. Yet the work can quite easily be buried, or half-buried, by the life.
castle constantly mines picasso smoke solid time
Braque was like some hilltop castle that Picasso was constantly besieging. He invests it, bombards it, mines it, assaults it - and each time the smoke clears, the castle is as solid as ever.
agreed eyes grew opinion
You grew old first not in your own eyes,but in other people's eyes;slowly,you agreed with their opinion of you.
adventure against ambiguous assume brought case confuse final invent people popular quite relationship solve sort successful turn writer
I think he had a quite sort of ambiguous relationship to Holmes. It made him rich, it made him famous, but as often the case with these things, a writer can turn against his or her most successful creation; hence, he killed him off (in 'The Adventure of the Final Problem') and brought him back by popular request. And, of course, people did sort of confuse them and assume if he could invent these complicated mysteries, then he could also solve them.
book considered fact few george left matter
I briefly considered writing it as a non-fiction book but the fact of the matter is that George left few traces,
boy holmes moment sherlock
I did read Sherlock Holmes as a boy but I never thought for a moment that I'd ever write about Doyle,
disappointment bridges piers
A pier is a disappointed bridge.
past differences age
It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.