707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

The diary was evidence; it was – it might be – corroboration. It might disrupt the banal reiterations of memory. It might jump-start something – though I had no idea what.

Playing Cupid, I should have you know, isn’t just a matter of flying around Arcadia and feeling your tiny winkle throb when the lovers finally kiss. It’s to do with timetables and street maps, cinema times and menus, money and organisation. You have to be both jaunty cheerleader and lithe psychiatrist. You require the binary skill of being absent when present, and present when absent.

I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.

As I’ve explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.

It’s easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren’t writers, and very little harm comes to them.

An English silence – one in which all the unspoken words are perfectly understood by both parties – prevailed. I got into my bed and wept. The matter was never referred to again.

And since the griefstruck rarely know what they need or want, only what they don’t, offence-giving and offence-taking are common.

Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence. Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for life-jacket.

My brother distrusts the essential truth of memories; I distrust the way we colour them in. We each have our own cheap-mail-order paintbox, and our favourite hues. Thus, I remembered Grandma a few pages ago as “petite and unopinionated”. My brother, when consulted, takes out his paintbrush and counterproposes “short and bossy.