707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

Not that this let me off the hook. My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being. And only recently I’d been going on about how the witnesses to our lives decrease, and with them our essential corroboration. Now I had some all too unwelcome corroboration of what I was, or had been. If only this had been the document Veronica had set light to.

A facetious if logical question comes into George’s mind, from where he cannot tell, unless as a reaction to all this unwonted intensity. If these are indeed the spirits of Englishmen and Englishwomen who have passed over into the next world, surely they would know how to form a proper queue?

One of my sons writes books I can read, but cannot understand, and the other writes books I can understand, but cannot read.

One of the troubles is this: the heart isn’t heart-shaped.

The one thing that is very good in life today is death.

The final tormenting, unanswerable question: what is ‘success’ in mourning?

What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest? Or is it, more simply, that wanting to know the worst is love’s favorite perversion.

I’m not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.

To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness – though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.