Quotes by Julian Barnes

“I don't ever want to get old. Spare me that. Have you the power? No, even you don't have the power, alas.”

“If you turned your back on irony, it curdled into sarcasm. And what good was it then? Sarcasm was irony which had lost its soul.”

“Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does:otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change we develop new habits ...”

“Irony - The modern mode: either the devils mark or the snorkel of sanity.”

“Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.”

“I feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women's eyes: there's so little choice, and whatever colouring is decided upon inevitably carries banal implications. Her eyes are blue: innocen...”

“When we're young, everyone over the age of thirty looks middle-aged, everyone over fifty antique. And time, as it goes by, confirms that we weren't that wrong. Those little age differentials, so cr...”

“He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an i...”

“You may say, But wasn't this the Sixties? Yes, but only for some people, only in certain parts of the country.”

“WHORES.Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius.”

“how weird it would be to have around you only as many books as you have time to read in the rest of your life. And I remain deeply attached to the physical book and the physical bookshop.”

“The constant tug between nature and civilization is what keeps on our toes. Though of course, that did rather beg the question of how you defined nature and how you defined civilization.”

“Me and my books, in the same apartment: like a gherkin in its vinegar.”

“Life always refused simplicity.”

“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.”

“The dangerous charm of GPC was that everything in the world could be called up; if you didn't look out, a couple of sessions might turn you from a serious enquirer into a mere gape-mouthed browser.”

“Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But its still the eyes we look at, isnt it? Thats where we found the other person, and find them still.”

“What does the novel do? It tells beautiful, shapely lies which enclose hard, exact truths.”

“Remember the botched brothel-visit in L’Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, ...”

“Is despair wrong? Isn’t it the natural condition of life after a certain age? … After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The eccentri...”