Julian Barnes Quotes

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.
Julian Barnes

Wife, Times, Mistress

All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things.
Julian Barnes

Bad, Lie, Night

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't.
Julian Barnes

Life, She, Books

Do we tend to recall the most important parts of a novel or those that speak most directly to us, the truest lines or the flashiest ones?
Julian Barnes

Important, Speak, Novel

Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.
Julian Barnes

Belief, Seems, Grief

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!
Julian Barnes

Death, Fear, Seems

I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious, I really hate it.
Julian Barnes

Hate, Serious, English

I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.
Julian Barnes

Survival, Instinct

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.
Julian Barnes

Mind, Write, Point

I'm a complete democrat in terms of who buys my books.
Julian Barnes

Books, Complete, Democrat

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.
Julian Barnes

Write, Ideas, Unless

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.
Julian Barnes

Why, Here, Paris

In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety.
Julian Barnes

Hope, Anxiety, Novel

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.
Julian Barnes

Work, Nature, Art

In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.
Julian Barnes

Sometimes, Rather, Influence

It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.
Julian Barnes

Wanted, Tell, Artist

Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.
Julian Barnes

Children, Remember, Negative

Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from its clutches.
Julian Barnes

Time, Book, Same

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.
Julian Barnes

Love, Power, Times

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.
Julian Barnes

Life, Book, Perfect

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.
Julian Barnes

Art, Nothing, Between

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.
Julian Barnes

Land, Breakfast

The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable.
Julian Barnes

Mind, Book, Once

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were.
Julian Barnes

Bad, Lazy, Readers

To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.
Julian Barnes

Ourselves, Suddenly, Objective

Share with your Friends

Everyone likes a good quote - don't forget to share.

Biography

Nationality: English

Type: Writer

Born: January 19, 1946

Links

Find on Amazon: Julian Barnes

Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics

Friendship Quotes

Motivational Quotes

Inspirational Quotes

Related Authors

Thomas Paine
Douglas Adams
Gilbert K. Chesterton
John Ruskin
Rudyard Kipling
Agatha Christie
Joseph Addison
Augustus Hare
More

Get Social with BrainyQuote

BrainyQuote Desktop

BrainyQuote Mobile

Site

Quote of the Day

Social

BQ on Pinterest

Syndication

Funny Quote Feed

Love Quote Feed

Nature Quote Feed

About Us