Julian Barnes Quotes

• Books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Reading

• Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women

• The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Politics

• To own a certain book – and to choose it without help – is to define yourself.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Books

• Remember that cookery writers are no different from other writers: many have only one book in them (and some shouldn’t have let it out in the first place).

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

• I’ve always thought you are what you are and you shouldn’t pretend to be anyone else. But Oliver used to correct me and explain that you are whoever it is you’re pretending to be.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce?  No, that’s too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Women were brought up to believe that men were the answer. They weren’t. They weren’t even one of the questions.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t… Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

• You can have your cake and eat it : the only trouble is you get fat.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

• We’d both been to the country and found it disappointingly empty.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Happiness

• Life versus Death becomes, as Montaigne pointed out, Old Age versus Death.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Death, Life

• If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing

• The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Writing

• The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing

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

  Julian Barnes

  Topics in Life

• 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.

  Julian Barnes

• The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

  Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes (20)

Birth:	19th January, 1946
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Writer

About

Julian Patrick Barnes is an English writer. Barnes won the Man Booker Prize for his book The Sense of an Ending, and three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: Flaubert's Parrot, England, England, and Arthur & George. He has also written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. In addition to novels, Barnes has published collections of essays and short stories.

Related Authors

• Elizabeth Gaskell
• Henry Mosquera
• Pierce Egan
• Charles Eastman
• Salvador Pániker
• Manel Loureiro
• Gloria Whelan
• R.M. Engelhardt
• Orson Pratt
• Lori Loughlin

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 5th November

Births

• 1946 - Ben Quayle
• 1971 - Jonny Greenwood
• 1885 - Will Durant
• 1943 - Sam Shepard
• 1605 - Thomas Shepard

Deaths

• 1979 - Al Capp
• 1881 - Robert Mallet
• 1944 - Alexis Carrel
• 1991 - Robert Maxwell
• 1975 - Lionel Trilling