707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

There is the question of accumulation, but not in the sense that Adrian meant, just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the poet pointed out, there is a difference between addition and increase.

I had a friend who trained as a lawyer, then became disenchanted and never practiced. He told me that the one benefit of those wasted years was that he no longer feared either the law or lawyers.

At times, I suspect that the concept of maturity is maintained by a conspiracy of niceness.

Altitude reduces all things to their relative proportions, and to the truth. Cares, remorse, disgust become strangers: How easily indifference, contempt, forgetfulness drop away... and forgiveness descends.

In love, everything is both true and false; it’s the one subject on which it’s impossible to say anything absurd.

Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that’s too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.

And he was not angry. But, before the pain set in, he had the time to be rueful. He had laid everything out, the best of himself, and it had not been enough. He had considered himself a bohemian, but she had proved too bohemian for him. And he had failed to understand her explanation of herself.

I’m a complete democrat in terms of who buys my books.

Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can’t we leave well enough alone? Why aren’t the books enough?