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
suicide opposites light
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.
world next spirit
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?
heart trouble
One of the troubles is this: the heart isn't heart-shaped.
pretending artifice
Wisdom consists partly in not pretending anymore, in discarding artifice.
disappointment bridges piers
A pier is a disappointed bridge.
land breakfast embarrassment
The land of embarrassment and breakfast.
love-is perhaps-love essentials
Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.
rewards merit
But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life’s business.
dream memories childhood
Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.
giving feelings age
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?
eye elderly world
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?
taken may greater
What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.
feelings guilt stronger
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.
philosophical thinking decision
...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.