707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

I am a worm in comparison with His Excellency. I am a worm.’ ‘Yes, that’s just it, you are a worm indeed.

Oliver used to have a theory he called Love, etc.: in other words the world divides into people for whom love is everything and the rest of life is a mere ‘etc.,’ and people who don’t value love enough and find the most exciting part of life is the ’etc.

Isn’t the most reliable form of pleasure, Flaubert implies, the pleasure of anticipation? Who needs to burst into fulfilment’s desolate attic?

And by that time he had made the most terrifying discovery of his life, one which probably cast a shadow over all his subsequent relationships: the realization that most love, even the most ardent and the most sincere, can, given the correct assault, curdle into a mixture of pity and anger.

A question from the floor: are there tribes whose lexicon lacks the words ‘I love you’? Or have they all died out.

But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions – and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives – then I plead guilty.

Life isn’t just addition and subtraction. There’s also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure.

Truths about writing can be framed before you’ve published a word; truths about life can be framed only when it’s too late to make any difference.

But art and religion will always shadow one another through the abstract nouns they both invoke: truth, seriousness, imagination, sympathy, morality, transcendence.