707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

It is better to waste your old age than to do nothing at all with it.

What happened to the truth is not recorded.

Blame someone else, that’s always your first instinct. And if you can’t blame someone else, then start claiming the problem isn’t a problem anyway. Rewrite the rules, shift the goalposts.

You’re still in it. You’ll always be in it. No, not literally. But in your heart. Nothing ever ends, not if it’s gone that deep. You’ll always be walking wounded. That’s the only choice, after a while. Walking wounded, or dead. Don’t you agree?

Is it splendid, or stupid, to take life seriously?

She is the centre of my world. The Armenians believed that Ararat was the centre of the world; but the mountain was divided between three great empires, and the Armenians ended up with none of it, so I shan’t continue this comparison. I love you.

Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t.

And perhaps it was also the case that, for all a lifetime’s internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as. That was your nature, whether you liked it or not.

Every love story is a potential grief story. If not at first, then later. If not for one, then for the other. Sometimes for both.