707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

Opera cuts to the chase—as death does. An art which seeks, more obviously than any other form, to break your heart.

He never recorded the writer or the source: he didn't want to be bullied by reputation; truth should stand by itself, clear and unsupported.

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

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.

That next week was one of the loneliest of my life. There seemed nothing left to look forward to.

(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.

Back in 'my day'—though I didn't claim ownership of it at the time, still less do I now . . .

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 gradually becomes less and less convincing?

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