Julian Barnes Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't.”

“Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction.”

“I am death-fearing. I don't think I'm morbid. That seems to me a fear of death that goes beyond the rational. Whereas it seems to me to be entirely rational to fear death!”

“Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.”

“Iconic Paris tells us: here are our three-star attractions, go thou and marvel. And so we gaze obediently at what we are told to gaze at, without exactly asking why.”

“In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.”

“Do we tend to recall the most important parts of a novel or those that speak most directly to us, the truest lines or the flashiest ones?”

“I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious, I really hate it.”

“I'm a complete democrat in terms of who buys my books.”

“I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.”