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
book reading live-your-life
Life … is a bit like reading. … If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that it’s yours. Similarly, why live your life? Because it’s yours. But what if such an answer becomes less and less convincing?
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 reading skills
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.
art reading skills
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.
alone character entity form great judging leave narrator novelist relief rid
That form is very freeing, ... It's a great relief for the novelist not to have to be there in the way a third-person narrator implies. If you get rid of all that -- that judging entity -- you just leave the character alone with the reader.
asked books happened people talking
Talking It Over' is the only one of my books people asked me what happened next, ... And they disagreed about what happened when the book concluded.
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.
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.
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
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,
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,
amazon equivalent great shot unknowable
It's the great drama, the great unknowable of most of our lives, ... We don't all paddle up the Amazon in a canoe and get shot at, but we do the equivalent of that (in our relationships).