707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

The title of The Raft of the Medusa, incidentally, is not The Raft of the Medusa. The painting was listed in the Salon catalogue as Scène de naufrage – Scene of Shipwreck. A cautious political move? Perhaps. But it’s equally a useful instruction to the spectator: this is a painting, not an opinion.

Many artists live with the shadow version of themselves. Unawareness of how things might have been if they have done this and not that. If life had made this choice for them rather than that. The road not taken remains at the back of the mind. For some their shadow exists as an external presence, for others an inner haunting.

It’s generally true that success, however defined, drives artistic friends apart more than failure does.

You don’t paint souls, you paint bodies, and the soul shines through.

There is a strong tradition in the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth of artists seeing marriage as the enemy of art. Love, yes; marriage, no. Flaubert took the wedding of any literary friend as a personal betrayal, and beyond that, a betrayal of their shared art.

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.

It had been a slow and painful business, discovering that the theory of love did not match the reality of life. It was like expecting to be able to write a symphony because you had once read a handbook of composition.

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

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