Quotes from barnes julian ii

You've got to be responsible for your own happiness -- you can't expect it to come flopping through the door like a parcel.

This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.

They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.

It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts.

I never start by making up a bunch of characters and then wonder what might happen to them. I think of a situation, an impossible dilemma, a moral or emotional quandary, and then wonder to whom it might happen and when and where.

In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence. But if you try that line in Europe, especially in France, they say, Oh, no! You're so English! I think I'm probably anchored somewhere in the Channel.

If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm, comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve?

You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang.

In order to write the novel I'm committed to, I have to pretend that it's not only separate from everything I've written before, but also separate from anything anyone in the history of the universe has written. This is a grotesque delusion and a crass vanity, but also a creative necessity.

It is an abnormal thing to want to be an artist, to practice an art. It is comparatively normal to practice an interpretative art. But to actually make things up is not something that, well, usually runs in families or is the recommendation of a career master.