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
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.
ironic devil irony
Irony - The modern mode: either the devil’s mark or the snorkel of sanity.
book writing helping
The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.
safe way mature
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.
congratulations mean self
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?
memories believe events
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.
book information looks
..books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information.
nostalgia remember ends
What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.
strong memories short-life
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.
famous-love sex love-is
Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex.
forgotten remembered dies
We live, we die, we are remembered, we are forgotten.
book life-is
Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't.
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.
atheist men white
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.