Quotes from Julian Barnes

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.

All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things.

Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.

To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.

What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.

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.

And no, it wasn't shame I now felt, or guilt, but something rarer in my life and stronger than both: remorse. A feeling which is more complicated, curdled, and primeval. Whose chief characteristic is that nothing can be done about it: too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, for amends to be made.

I don't believe in God, but I miss him.

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them.

Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.

Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.

Every love story is a potential grief story.

Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life's business.

When you're young you prefer the vulgar months, the fullness of the seasons. As you grow older you learn to like the in-between times, the months that can't make up their minds. Perhaps it's a way of admitting that things can't ever bear the same certainty again.

You can deal with the brain, as I say; it looks sensible, whereas the heart, the human heart, I'm afraid, looks a fucking mess.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

Nature is so exact, it hurts exactly as much as it is worth, so in a way one relishes the pain, I think. If it didn't matter, it wouldn't matter.

Because love is the meeting point of truth and magic. Truth, as in photography; magic, as in ballooning.

Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it. Art no more belongs to the People and the Party than it once belonged to the aristocracy and the patron. Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time. Art does not exist for art's sake: it exists for people's sake.

Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.

What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?' 'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly. 'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. ... 'Finn?' 'History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation. (quoting Patrick Lagrange)

Is despair wrong? Isn't it the natural condition of life after a certain age? … After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The eccentric, the religious, the artistic (sometimes); those with a false sense of their own worth. Soft cheeses collapse; firm cheeses indurate. Both go mouldy.

Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.