Julian Barnes Quotes & Sayings

“Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.”

“When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.”

“I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.”

“Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.”

“The land of embarrassment and breakfast.”

“Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.”

“What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.”

“Paris is certainly one of the most boastful of cities, and you could argue that it has had a lot to boast about: at various times the European centre of power, of civilisation, of the arts, and (self-advertisingly, at least) of love.”

“All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things.”

“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.”