But what helps? What do we need to know? Not everything. Everything confuses. Directness also confuses. The full-face portrait staring back at you hypnotises. Flaubert is usually looking away in his portraits and photographs. He’s looking away so that you can’t catch his eye; he’s also looking away because what he can see over your shoulder is more interesting than your shoulder.

— Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes Quotes

For a woman, fidelity is a virtue; for a man, it’s hard work.

— Julian Barnes

El arte siempre tiene al tiempo de su parte.

— Julian Barnes

Well, getting our history wrong is part of being a person.

— Julian Barnes

Once, we were talking about public reaction to some political scandal, and I suggested that it was normal for people to need someone to blame. ‘Normal doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,’ she answered.

— Julian Barnes

And remember, whenever you see a character in a novel, let alone a biography or history book, reduced and neatened into three adjectives, always distrust that description.

— Julian Barnes

Beware of dreams,” Elizabeth Finch replied. “Also, as a general rule, beware of what most people aspire to.

— Julian Barnes

Monomania. Monogamy. Monotony. Nothing good begins this way.

— Julian Barnes

Enforced monogamy is as much to say enforced happiness, which we know is not possible. Unenforced monogamy might seem possible. Romantic monogamy might seem to be desirable. But the first normally collapses back into a version of enforced monogamy, while the second is liable to become obsessive and hysterical. And thereby lies close to monomania. We should always distinguish between mutual passion and shared monomania.

— Julian Barnes

Perhaps Goethe never found the right woman.

— Julian Barnes

But if you think that only what is yours is yours, and that what is not your own is, just as it is, not your own, then no one will ever coerce you, no one will hinder you, you will blame no one, you will not accuse anyone, you will not do a single thing unwillingly, you will have no enemies, and no one will harm you, because you will not be harmed at all.

— Julian Barnes

When I tell people that she was the most grown-up person I have known, I suppose what I mean is that there were principles very close behind, if not actually embedded in, all her actions and thoughts.

— Julian Barnes

They say things are determined by genetics, by parenting, by heredity, by climate, by diet, by geography, by time spent in the womb, by nature, by nurture. They fail to hear the elephant in the room, trumpeting away: history.

— Julian Barnes

And secondly, reducing the diversity between people didn’t result in harmony within. The narcissism of small differences ensured this.

— Julian Barnes

Be approximately satisfied with approximate happiness. The only thing in life which is clear and beyond doubt is unhappiness.

— Julian Barnes

Monoglot, the sign of an enclosed and self-deluding country.

— Julian Barnes

This was a typical statement from my mother: lucid, opinionated, explicitly impatient of opposing views. Her dominance of the family, and her certainties about the world, made things usefully clear in childhood, restrictive in adolescence, and grindingly repetitive in adulthood.

— Julian Barnes

He said that there were three preconditions for happiness – stupidity, selfishness and good health.

— Julian Barnes

One secret of the Christian religion’s success was always to employ the best moviemakers.

— Julian Barnes

There was an old char who came twice a week, Mrs. Dyer; she had poor eyesight for cleaning but perfect vision for stealing vegetables and pints of milk. But who else came to the house? No friends were mentioned. Each weekend, Macleod played a round of golf; Susan had the tennis club. In all the times I joined them for supper, I never met anyone else.

— Julian Barnes

From what I did and what I said Let them not seek to find who I was.

— Julian Barnes
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