707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

This is where we work, in the interstices of ignorance, the land of contradiction and silence, planning to convince you with the seemingly known, to resolve - or make usefully vivid - the contradiction, and to make the silence eloquent.

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

Later—well, what came later, came later.

Margarita mėgdavo sakyti, kad yra dvi rūšys moterų: tos, kurios matomos kiaurai, ir tos, kurios nešioja paslaptį. Ir kad tai yra svarbiausia, ką vyrai išsyk pajunta, ir svarbiausia, kas juos patraukia arba ne. Vienus traukia vieno tipo moterys, kitus kito. Margarita - man nereikia to sakyti - buvo kiaurai matoma, bet kartais ji pavydėdavo toms, kurios nešiojo paslaptį ar apsimesdavo jos apgaubtos.

You realize that you want official interference into other people’s lives but not into your own. You also realize that your truthfulness has become dangerously flexible.

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

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.

Remorse, etymologically, is the action of biting again: that's what the feeling does to you. Imagine the strength of the bite when I reread my words. They seemed like some ancient curse I had forgotten even uttering.

Rather, what happened to human illusions was that they crumbled, they withered away. It was a long and wearisome process, like a toothache reaching far into the soul. But you can pull out a tooth and it will be gone. Illusions, however, even when dead, continue to rot and stink within us. We cannot escape their taste and smell. We carry them around with us all the time.