707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

A pier is a disappointed bridge.

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were.

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

I'm interested in such things as the difference between how we perceive the world and what the world turns out to be. The difference is between the stories we tell others and the stories we tell ourselves. There is a wonderful Russian saying, which I use as the epigraph of one of my novels, which goes, He lies like an eyewitness. Which is very sly, clever and true.

To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.

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.

You grew old first not in your own eyes,but in other people's eyes;slowly,you agreed with their opinion of you.

Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.

History is the lies of the victors,