Top quotes by Julian Barnes

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. Votes: 34

I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious, I really hate it. Votes: 18

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. Votes: 15

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. Votes: 14

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! Votes: 13

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. Votes: 8

You can deal with the brain, as I say; it looks sensible, whereas the heart, the human heart, I'm afraid, looks a fucking mess. Votes: 7

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. Votes: 6

I don't believe in God, but I miss him. Votes: 6

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. Votes: 5

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. Votes: 5

In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety. Votes: 5

Those were the days in this country where H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and Conan Doyle could have influence, and thats gone, thats true. But I dont think we have less influence in the hearts and minds of readers. I think, if anything, we have just as much, if not more. Votes: 5

Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists. Votes: 4

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. Votes: 4

Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction. Votes: 3

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies. Votes: 3

To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock. Votes: 2

The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable. Votes: 2

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't. Votes: 2

In life, every ending is just the start of another story. Votes: 1

My brother distrusts the essential truth of memories; I distrust the way we colour them in. We each have our own cheap-mail-order paintbox, and our favourite hues. Thus, I remembered Grandma a few pages ago as petite and unopinionated. My brother, when consulted, takes out his paintbrush and counterproposes short and bossy. Votes: 1

He always thought that Touie's long illness would somehow prepare him for her death. He always imagined that grief anf guilt, if they followed, would be more clear-edged, more defined, more finite. Instead they seem like weather, like clouds constantly re-forming into new shapes, blown by nameless, unidentifiable winds. Votes: 1

Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later [...]. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? Votes: 1

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 instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense." Votes: 1

I would have to go back into my past and deal with Adrian. My philosopher friend, who gazed on life and decided that any responsible, thinking individual should have the right to reject this gift that had never been asked for - and whose noble gesture re-emphasised with each passing decade the compromise and littleness that most lives consist of. 'Most lives': my life." Votes: 1

Our nights are different. She falls asleep like someone yielding to the gentle tug of a warm tide, and floats with confidence till morning. I fall asleep more grudgingly, thrashing at the waves, either reluctant to let a good day depart or still bitching about a bad one. Different currents run through our spells of unconsciousness." Votes: 1

And if you had no tongue, no celebrating language, you'd do this: cross your hands at the wrist with palms facing towards you; place your crossed wrists over your heart (the middle of your chest, anyway); then move your hands outwards a short distance, and open them towards the object of your love. It's just as eloquent as speech." Votes: 1

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 crucial and so gross when we are young erode. We end up all belonging to the same category, that of the non-young. I've never much minded this myself." Votes: 1

The despairing are always being urged to abstain from selfishness, to think of others first. This seems unfair. Why load them with responsibility for the welfare of others, when their own already weighs them down?" Votes: 1

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation. Votes: 0

I'm interested in such things as the difference between how we perceive the world and what the world turns out to be. The difference is between the stories we tell others and the stories we tell ourselves. There is a wonderful Russian saying, which I use as the epigraph of one of my novels, which goes, He lies like an eyewitness. Which is very sly, clever and true. Votes: 0

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. Votes: 0

The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity. Votes: 0

Great books are readable anyway. Dickens is readable. Jane Austen is readable. John Updike's readable. Hawthorne's readable. It's a meaningless term. You have to go the very extremes of literature, like Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake," before you get a literary work that literally unreadable. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

How rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at sea, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us. Votes: 0

You can define a net two ways, depending on your point of view. Normally you would say it is a meshed instrument designed to catch fish. But you could, with no great injury to logic, reverse the image and define the net as a jocular lexicographer once did: he called it a collection of holes tied together with string. Votes: 0

But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book. Votes: 0

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly. Votes: 0

Did you know that there is no exact rhyme in the Russian language for the word 'pravda'? Ponder and weigh this insufficiency in your mind. Doesn't that just echo down the canyons of your soul? Votes: 0

The best fiction rarely provides answers; but it does formulate the questions exceptionally well. Votes: 0

The mechanism of natural selection depends on the survival, not of the strongest, nor the most intelligent, but of the most adaptable. Votes: 0

Perhaps grief, which destroys all patterns, destroys even more: the belief that any patterns exist. But we cannot, I think, survive without such belief. So each of us must pretend to find, or re-erect, a pattern. Votes: 0

Was it the case that colours dimmed as the eye grew elderly? Or was it rather that in youth your excitement about the world transferred itself onto everything you saw and made it brighter? Votes: 0

He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them. Votes: 0

This was long before the term 'single-parent family' came into use; back then it was a 'broken home'... Votes: 0

History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated. Votes: 0

History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us. Votes: 0

Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life's business. Votes: 0

Sejarah bukanlah apa yang terjadi. Sejarah hanyalah apa yang dituturkan sejarawan kepada kita. Votes: 0

Why slum it where people were burdened by yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that? By history? Here, on the Island, they had learnt how to deal with history, how to sling it carelessly on your back and stride out across the download with the breeze in your face. Votes: 0

If you'll excuse a brief history lesson: most people didn't experience 'the sixties' until the seventies. Which meant, logically, that most people in the sixties were still experiencing the fifties--or, in my case, bits of both decades side by side. Which made things rather confusing. Votes: 0

Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing--until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return. Votes: 0

Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm, comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve? Votes: 0

What is History? Any thoughts, Webster?''History is the lies of the victors," I replied, a little too quickly. 'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. Votes: 0

There is a grotesquerie to grief as well. You lose the sense of your existence being rational, or justifiable. You feel absurd. Votes: 0

If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what caused me to be like this, it's not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details. Votes: 0

You can put it another way, of course; you always can. Votes: 0

I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen. Votes: 0

There is violence in this supposedly tender heart of mine. Votes: 0

Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual. Votes: 0

WHORES.Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius. Votes: 0

The land of embarrassment and breakfast. Votes: 0

To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

One weekend in the vacation, I was invited to meet her family. They lived in Kent, out on the Orpington line, in one of those suburbs which had stopped concreting over nature at the very last minute, and ever since smugly claimed rural status. Votes: 0

I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation. Votes: 0

A pier is a disappointed bridge. Votes: 0

Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure. Votes: 0

Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, and how we lose it. Votes: 0

And that was all the part of it - the way you were obliged to live. You stifled a groan, you lied about your love, you deceived your legal wife, and all in the name of honour. That was the damned paradox of it - in order to behave well, you have to behave badly. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from its clutches. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible. Votes: 0

In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence. Votes: 0

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were. Votes: 0

I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not,except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it,and how this affects our dealings with others.Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it;some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of. Votes: 0

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Votes: 0

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously. Votes: 0

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape "“ into different countries, mores, speech patterns "“ but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. Votes: 0

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 and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also - if this isn't too grand a word - our tragedy. Votes: 0

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but"”mainly"”to ourselves. Votes: 0

Early in life, the world divides crudely into those who have had sex and those who haven't. Later, into those who have known love, and those who haven't. Later still - at least, if we are lucky (or, on the other hand, unlucky) - it divides into those who have endured grief, and those who haven't. These divisions are absolute; they are tropics we cross. Votes: 0

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it's still the eyes we look at, isn't it? That's where we found the other person, and find them still. Votes: 0

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life. Votes: 0

You grew old first not in your own eyes, but in other people's eyes; then, slowly, you agreed with their opinion of you. Votes: 0

I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was. Votes: 0

There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond this there is great unrest. Votes: 0

The better you know someone, the less well you often see them (and the less well they can therefore be transferred into fiction). They may be so close as to be out of focus, and there is no operating novelist to dispel the blur. Votes: 0

Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all. Votes: 0

What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest? Or is it, more simply, that wanting to know the worst is love's favorite perversion. Votes: 0

Women were brought up to believe that men were the answer. They weren't. They weren't even one of the questions. Votes: 0

Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication? Votes: 0

(on grief) And you do come out of it, that's true. After a year, after five. But you don't come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life. Votes: 0

Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth. If it is not that - if it is not moral in its effect - then love is no more than an exaggerated form of pleasure. Votes: 0

The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can. Votes: 0

We live, we die, we are remembered, we are forgotten. Votes: 0

We live with such easy assumptions, don't we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it's all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it's not convenient--- it's not useful--- to believe this; it doesn't help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it. Votes: 0

This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things. Votes: 0

What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed. Votes: 0

We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Votes: 0

Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry. Votes: 0

..books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information. Votes: 0

We live on the flat, on the level, and yet - and so - we aspire. Groundlings, we can sometimes reach as far as the gods. Some soar with art, others with religion; most with love. But when we soar, we can also crash. There are few soft landings. We may find ourselves bouncing across the ground with leg-fracting force, dragged towards some foreign railway line. Every love story is a potential grief story. If not at first, then later. If not for one, then for the other. Sometimes, for both. Votes: 0

Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance. Votes: 0

When you're young you prefer the vulgar months, the fullness of the seasons. As you grow older you learn to like the in-between times, the months that can't make up their minds. Perhaps it's a way of admitting that things can't ever bear the same certainty again. Votes: 0

When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later.. later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. Votes: 0

Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex. Votes: 0

The more you learn, the less you fear. Votes: 0

When you're young - when I was young - you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality. Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become. You want them to tell you that things are OK. And is there anything wrong with that? Votes: 0

Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. Votes: 0

It is a bizarre thought that in this [U.S. 2008] presidential cycle we could have had a woman in the White House we might have a black man in the White House but if either of them had said they were atheists neither of them would have had a hope in hell. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The companionship of dead writers is a wonderful form of live friendship. Votes: 0

When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world Votes: 0

If these are indeed the spirits of Englishmen and Englishwomen who have passed over into the next world, surely they would know how to form a proper queue? Votes: 0

Irony - The modern mode: either the devil's mark or the snorkel of sanity. Votes: 0

What happiness is there in just the memory of happiness? Votes: 0

Every love story is a potential grief story. Votes: 0

Nature is so exact, it hurts exactly as much as it is worth, so in a way one relishes the pain, I think. If it didn't matter, it wouldn't matter. Votes: 0

You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed... Votes: 0

Global warming is more of a blessing than a curse. Votes: 0

I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory. Votes: 0

There is a German word, Sehnsucht, which has no English equivalent; it means 'the longing for something'. It has Romantic and mystical connotations; C.S. Lewis defined it as the 'inconsolable longing' in the human heart for 'we know not what'. It seems rather German to be able to specify the unspecifiable. The longing for something - or, in our case, for someone. Votes: 0

Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well enough alone? Why aren't the books enough? Votes: 0

When we fall in love, we hope - both egotistically and altruistically - that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and approved. Of course, love does not always bring approval: being seen may just as well lead to a thumbs-down and a season in hell. Votes: 0

I dreamt that I woke up. It's the oldest dream of all, and I've just had it Votes: 0

Irony ... may be defined as what people miss. Votes: 0

History is the lies of the victors, Votes: 0

Why should anything happen when everything has happened? Votes: 0

If you're that clever you can argue yourself into anything. Votes: 0

You lose the world for a glance? Of course you do. That is what the world is for: to lose under the right circunstances. Votes: 0

You put together two people who have not been put together before; and sometimes the world is changed, sometimes not. They may crash and burn, or burn and crash. But sometimes, something new is made, and then the world is changed. Together, in that first exaltation, that first roaring sense of uplift, they are greater than their two separate selves. Together, they see further, and they see more clearly. Votes: 0

Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence . Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for life-jacket. Votes: 0

Is any novelist going to recognize the moment when he or she has nothing more to say? It is a brave thing to admit. And since as a professional writer you are full of anxiety anyway, you could easily misread the signs. Votes: 0

Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting. Votes: 0

Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

[Literature is] a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. Votes: 0

We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we can't understand time, can't grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history--even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it? Votes: 0

Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded in ebullient despatches as the enemy falls back; then the beginning of a long, morale-sapping trudge with rations getting shorter and the first snowflakes upon your face. The enemy burns Moscow and you yield to General January, whose fingernails are very icicles. Bitter retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually you fall beneath a boy-gunner's grapeshot while crossing some Polish river not even marked on your general's map. Votes: 0

The imagination doesn't crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever's there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes nothing at all. And in the years of glut there is always a slatted wooden tray in some cool, dark attic, which the writer nervously visits from time to time; and yes, oh dear, while he's been hard at work downstairs, up in the attic there are puckering skins, warning spots, a sudden brown collapse and the sprouting of snowflakes. What can he do about it? Votes: 0

Writers of either gender ought to be able to do the opposite sex-that's one basic test of competence, after all. Votes: 0

Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can. Votes: 0

A couple's first task, it has always seemed to me, is to solve the problem of breakfast; if this can be worked out amicably, most other difficulties can too. Votes: 0

People in love, it is well known, suffer extreme conceptual delusions, the most common of these being that other people find your condition as thrilling and eye-watering as you do yourselves. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

But that's one advantage of fiction, you can speed up time. Votes: 0

Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical. Votes: 0

I'm a complete democrat in terms of who buys my books. Votes: 0

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people. Votes: 0

To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness. Votes: 0

You put together two people who have not been put together before. Sometimes it is like that first attempt to harness a hydrogen balloon to a fire balloon: do you prefer crash and burn, or burn and crash? But sometimes it works, and something new is made, and the world is changed. Then, at some point, sooner or later, for this reason or that, one of them is taken away. and what is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. this may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible. Votes: 0

You would think, wouldn't you, that if you were the child of a happy marriage, then you ought to have a better than average marriage yourself "“ either through some genetic inheritance or because you'd learnt from example? But it doesn't seem to work like that. So perhaps you need the opposite example "“ to see mistakes in order not to make them yourself. Except this would mean that the best way for parents to ensure their children have happy marriages would be to have unhappy ones themselves. So what's the answer? Votes: 0

And if you had no tongue, no celebrating language, you'd do this: cross your hands at the wrist with palms facing towards you; place your crossed wrists over your heart (the middle of your chest, anyway); then move your hands outwards a short distance, and open them towards the object of your love. It's just as eloquent as speech. Votes: 0

Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke. Votes: 0

But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life's business. Votes: 0

And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Votes: 0

And that's a life, isn't it? Some achievements and some disappointments. It's been interesting to me, though I wouldn't complain or be amazed if others found it less so. Maybe, in a way, Adrian knew what he was doing. Not that I would have missed my own life for anything, you understand. [pp.60-61] Votes: 0

Discovering, for example, that as witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. [p. 65] Votes: 0

Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for? Votes: 0

That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us. Votes: 0

The next day, when I was sober, I thought again about the three of us, and about time's many paradoxes. For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully. Votes: 0

I have at times tried to imagine the despair which leads to suicide, attempted to conjure up the slew and slop of darkness in which only death appears as a pinprick of light: in other words, the exact opposite of the normal condition of life. Votes: 0

Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve? Votes: 0

He thought of trying to explain something he had recently noticed about himself: that if anyone insulted him, or one of his friends, he didn't really mind--or not much, anyway. Whereas if anyone insulted a novel, a story, a poem that he loved, something visceral and volcanic occurred within him. He wasn't sure what this might mean--except perhaps that he had got life and art mixed up, back to front, upside down. Votes: 0

When I was still quite young I had a complete presentiment of life. It was like the nauseating smell of cooking escaping from a ventilator: you don't have to have eaten it to know that it would make you throw up. Votes: 0

When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the young applaud the most insignificant improvements "¦ while remaining heedless of the world's barbarism. I don't say things have got worse; I merely say the young wouldn't notice if they had. The old times were good because then we were young, and ignorant of how ignorant the young can be. Votes: 0

If a man cannot tell what he wants to do, then he must find out what he ought to do. If desire has become complicated, then hold fast to duty. Votes: 0

Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary. Votes: 0

Sometimes you find the panel, but it doesn't open; sometimes it opens, and your gaze meets nothing but a mouse skeleton. But at least you've looked. That's the real distinction between people: not between those who have secrets and those who don't, but between those who want to know everything and those who don't. This search is a sign of love I maintain. Votes: 0

Wisdom consists partly in not pretending anymore, in discarding artifice. Votes: 0

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel. Votes: 0

Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity? Are you sure you aren't treating yourself to easy self-congratulation, seeking approval, making certain you're on the right side? Votes: 0

The best form of government is one that is dying, because that means it's giving way to something else. Votes: 0

If the writer were more like a reader, he'd be a reader, not a writer. It's as uncomplicated as that. Votes: 0

One of the troubles is this: the heart isn't heart-shaped. Votes: 0

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 eccentric, the religious, the artistic (sometimes); those with a false sense of their own worth. Soft cheeses collapse; firm cheeses endurate. Both go mouldy. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?' 'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly. 'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. ... 'Finn?' '"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." (quoting Patrick Lagrange) Votes: 0

Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior. Votes: 0

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 crucial and so gross when we are young erode. We end up all belonging to the same category, that of the non-young. I've never much minded this myself. Votes: 0

To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself. Votes: 0

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 instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense. Votes: 0

May you be ordinary, as the poet once wished the new-born baby. Votes: 0

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Votes: 0

There's nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius. Votes: 0

In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when the moment came, our lives -- and time itself -- would speed up. How were we to know that our lives had in any case begun, that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already inflicted? Also, that our release would only be into a larger holding pen, whose boundaries would be at first undiscernible. Votes: 0

The rainbow in place of the unicorn? Why didn't God just restore the unicorn? We animals would have been happier with that, instead of a big hint in the sky about God's magnanimity every time it stopped raining. Votes: 0

...life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is the moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

And no, it wasn't shame I now felt, or guilt, but something rarer in my life and stronger than both: remorse. A feeling which is more complicated, curdled, and primeval. Whose chief characteristic is that nothing can be done about it: too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, for amends to be made. Votes: 0

In my terms, I settled for the realities of life, and submitted to its necessities: if this, then that, and so the years passed. In Adrian's terms, I gave up on life, gave up on examining it, took it as it came. And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse - a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred - about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned the ambitions I had entertained. I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was. Votes: 0

...God knows you can have complication and difficulty without any compensating depth or seriousness Votes: 0

Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary Votes: 0

And perhaps it was also the case that, for all a lifetime's internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as. That was your nature, whether you liked it or not. Votes: 0

Most people, in my opinion, steal much of what they are. If they didn't what poor items they would be. Votes: 0

But I've been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don't get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn't even true at the time"”love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions"”and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives"”then I plead guilty. Votes: 0

[Flaubert] didn't just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together. Votes: 0

Not merely hope, but any burdensome yearning: ambition, hatred, love (especially love) - how rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at see, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us. Catastrophe has become art; but this is no reducing process. It is freeing, enlarging, explaining. Catastrophe has become art: that is, after all, what it is for. Votes: 0

He didn't really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself. Votes: 0

Whisky, I find, helps clarity of thought. And reduces pain. It has the additional virtue of making you drunk or, if taken in sufficient quantity, very drunk. Votes: 0

His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion. Votes: 0

Memory is identity....You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life you cease to be, even before your death. Votes: 0

I've always thought you are what you are and you shouldn't pretend to be anyone else. But Oliver used to correct me and explain that you are whoever it is you're pretending to be. Votes: 0

It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them. Votes: 0

Poets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible "˜I'"¦. Then again, poets seem able to turn bad love "“ selfish, shitty love "“ into good love poetry. Prose writers lack this power of admirable, dishonest transformation. We can only turn bad love into prose about bad love. So we are envious (and slightly distrustful) when poets talk to us of love. Votes: 0

The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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, later in memory. Votes: 0

This is what those who haven't crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn't mean that they do not exist. Votes: 0

Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery. Votes: 0

we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death Votes: 0

I'm one of those writers who started off writing novels and came to writing short stories later, partly because I didn't have the right ideas, partly because I think that short stories are more difficult. I think learning to write short stories also made me attracted toward a paring down of the novel form. Votes: 0

You can't have a novel without real, believable people, and once you get into either too theoretical a novel or too philosophical a novel, you get into the dangers that the French novel has discovered in the past 50 or 60 years. And you get into a sort of aridity. No, you have to have real, identifiable people to whom the reader reacts in a way as if they were real people. Votes: 0