707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.

I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.

Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.

I am death-fearing. I don't think I'm morbid. That seems to me a fear of death that goes beyond the rational. Whereas it seems to me to be entirely rational to fear death!

Whisky, I find, helps clarity of thought. And reduces pain. It has the additional virtue of making you drunk or, if taken in sufficient quantity, very drunk.

Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.

Do we tend to recall the most important parts of a novel or those that speak most directly to us, the truest lines or the flashiest ones?

I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.

Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.