707 Quotes by Julian Barnes

On our behalf they dreaded the closeness of adolescent friendship, the predatory behaviour of strangers on trains, the lure of the wrong kind of girl. How far their anxieties outran our experience.

Isn’t there something between stagnation and heading somewhere?” “Like?” “Like having a nice time. Enjoy the day and all that?

I was too far away to observe what color Enid Starkie’s eyes were; all I remember of her is that she dressed like a matelot, walked like a scrum-half, and had an atrocious French accent.

Try as I could – which wasn’t very hard – I rarely ended up fantasising a markedly different life from the one that has been mine. I don’t think this is complacency; it’s more likely a lack of imagination, or ambition, or something.

I think there’s a different authenticity to memory, and not an inferior one. Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer.

And so, by the end, you have tried soft love and tough love, feelings and reason, truth and lies, promises and threats, hope and stoicism.

The relationship between professional and domestic cook has similarities to a sexual encounter. One party is normally more experienced than the other; and either party should have the right, at any moment, to say, “No, I’m not going to do that.

I didn’t want the day to unravel. Though looking back, it was not the day, but the four of us, that were beginning to unravel.

Integrity is like virginity: once lost, never recoverable.