When we fall in love, we hope – both egotistically and altruistically – that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and approved. Of course, love does not always bring approval: being seen may just as well lead to a thumbs-down and a season in hell.

— Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes Quotes

Why should anything happen when everything has happened?

— Julian Barnes

Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can’t we leave well enough alone? Why aren’t the books enough?

— Julian Barnes

When I was still quite young I had a complete presentiment of life. It was like the nauseating smell of cooking escaping from a ventilator: you don’t have to have eaten it to know that it would make you throw up.

— Julian Barnes

History isn’t what happened, history is just what historians tell us.

— Julian Barnes

I dreamt that I woke up. It’s the oldest dream of all, and I’ve just had it.

— Julian Barnes

If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that’s what caused me to be like this, it’s not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details.

— Julian Barnes

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

But that’s one advantage of fiction, you can speed up time.

— Julian Barnes

You can put it another way, of course; you always can.

— Julian Barnes

Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.

— Julian Barnes

I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded – and how pitiful that was.

— Julian Barnes

There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond this there is great unrest.

— Julian Barnes

Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there’s powerful evidence to the contrary.

— Julian Barnes

That’s one of the central problems of history, isn’t it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.

— Julian Barnes

Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication?

— Julian Barnes

And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.

— Julian Barnes

Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.

— Julian Barnes

He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.

— Julian Barnes

Whisky, I find, helps clarity of thought. And reduces pain. It has the additional virtue of making you drunk or, if taken in sufficient quantity, very drunk.

— Julian Barnes

This is what those who haven’t crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn’t mean that they do not exist.

— Julian Barnes
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