Quotes from Julian Barnes

On the other hand, the emotional record was not like a history book; its truths were constantly changing, and true even when incompatible.

Quarafon; le Vicaire-Général; el Alcalde; el viejo Seigneur; el Idiota de los Salones. Todos estos títulos fueron adquiridos por un hombre que se mostraba indiferente a los tratamientos honoríficos. «Los honores deshonran; el título degrada; el cargo embrutece.»

Quando si è giovani-parlo per me almeno-si vogliono provare sentimenti simili a quelli di cui leggiamo nei libri. Passioni che ti sconvolgono la vita, che creano e definiscono una realtà nuova. Più tardi, mi pare, vogliamo dai sentimenti qualcosa di più pratico e modesto: che siano di sostegno alla nostra vita per come è diventata e si manifesta. Vogliamo che ci garantiscano che va tutto bene. E che c'è di male in questo? da Il senso di una fine

Los críticos de nuestros días que, con tremenda pomposidad, dicen que todas las novelas, obras de teatro y poemas no son más que textos – ¡el autor de la guillotina!– no deberían olvidarse del caso de Flaubert. Un siglo antes que ellos ya estaba redactando textos y negando la significación de su propia personalidad.

de sus acreedores, su madre no tuvo más remedio que vender algunas tierras. ¡Quinientos francos en guantes! ¿El oso blanco con guantes blancos? Qué va, qué va; más bien el loro enguantado.

Tai, kÄ… galiausiai prisimeni, ne visada yra tas pats, kÄ… patyrei

Though why should we expect age to mellow us? 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?

1850) 'From time to time, I open a newspaper. Things seem to be proceeding at a dizzy rate. We are dancing not on the edge of a volcano, but on the wooden seat of a latrine, and it seems to me more than a touch rotten. Soon society will go plummeting down and drown in nineteen centuries of shit. There'll be quite a lot of shouting.

de todo ello: «Más vale malograr la ancianidad que no saber qué hacer con ella.»

Die Bücher sagen: Sie hat es getan, weil. Das Leben sagt: Sie hat es getan. In den Büchern werden einem die Dinge erklärt; im Leben nicht. Es überrascht mich nicht, dass manche Leute Bücher vorziehen. Bücher verleihen dem Leben einen Sinn. Das Problem dabei ist nur, dass die Leben, denen sie Sinn verleihen, die Leben anderer Leute sind, niemals das eigene.

Duty done, only child safely seen to the temporary harbour of marriage. Now all you have to do is not get Alzheimer's and remember to leave her such money as you have. And you could try to do better than your parents by dying when the money will actually be of use to her. That'd be a start.

Let others argue about that; his only concern was to get to the end of each day. He had become a technique for survival. Below a certain point, that was what all men became: techniques for survival.

c'est moi» es una alusión a la respuesta que dio Cervantes cuando en su lecho de muerte le preguntaron por el origen de su famoso personaje. Cf. Travestismo.

time's many paradoxes. For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully. Nowadays

you begin lying to her. Why? Something to do with the need to create some internal space which you could keep intact—and where you could yourself remain intact. And this is how it is for you now. Love and truth—where have they gone? You ask yourself: Is staying with her an act of courage on your part, or an act of cowardice? Perhaps both? Or is it just an inevitability?

Photographs were useful, but somehow always confirmed the memory rather than liberating it.

there was a sense in which he had no choice. He couldn't live with Susan; he couldn't establish a separate life away from her; therefore he went back to live with her. Courage or cowardice? Or mere inevitability?

Life was the cat that dragged the parrot downstairs by its tail; his head banged against every step.

At least by now he was familar with the patterned patternlessness of the life he was submitting to again. His reappearance was greeted not with happiness or relief, but with a blithe lack of surprise. Because such a return was always going to happen. Because young men must be allowed their delinquencies, but shouldn't be congratulated when they returned to a place they should never have left.

they continued under the same roof, with good days and bad weeks, swallowed rage, occasional outbursts and increasing social isolation. All this no longer made him feel interesting; instead, he felt a failure and an outcast.

After two hours or so, I gave up. I came back the next day, and the next, without success. Then I drove to the street with the pub and the shop, and parked outside. I waited, went into the shop and bought a few things, waited some more, drove home. I had absolutely no sense of wasting my time: rather, it was the opposite way round—that this was what my time was now for.

But the very action of naming something that subsequently happens—of wishing specific evil, and that evil coming to pass—this still has a shiver of the otherworldly about it.

But he found the routine of admin, diary-keeping, mail, billings—even the banalities of maintaining the coffee machine and water cooler—gave him quiet satisfaction. In part, no doubt, because he often arrived from Henry Road in a state unfit for much more than low-level administration.

The whole dream of democracy,' he wrote, 'is to raise the proletariat to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeoisie.