707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from its clutches.

Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary

[Literature is] a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts.

Those were the days in this country where H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and Conan Doyle could have influence, and thats gone, thats true. But I dont think we have less influence in the hearts and minds of readers. I think, if anything, we have just as much, if not more.

Why should anything happen when everything has happened?

But that’s one advantage of fiction, you can speed up time.

A couple's first task, it has always seemed to me, is to solve the problem of breakfast; if this can be worked out amicably, most other difficulties can too.

Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication?

People in love, it is well known, suffer extreme conceptual delusions, the most common of these being that other people find your condition as thrilling and eye-watering as you do yourselves.