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WHORES. Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius.

Julian Barnes

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Julian Barnes
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: January 19
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Translator
Writer
Leicester
England
J. Barnes
J Barnes
Edward Pygge
Julian Patrick Barnes
Whores
Nineteenth
Claim
Claims
Necessary
Genius
Contraction
Century
Syphilis
Without
Contractions

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Global warming is more of a blessing than a curse.
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He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.
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If these are indeed the spirits of Englishmen and Englishwomen who have passed over into the next world, surely they would know how to form a proper queue?
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we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death
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I don't believe in God, but I miss him.
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You lose the world for a glance? Of course you do. That is what the world is for: to lose under the right circunstances.
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All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things.
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To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness.
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Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity? Are you sure you aren’t treating yourself to easy self-congratulation, seeking approval, making certain you’re on the right side?
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To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.
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He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense.
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The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.
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I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.
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The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.
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There's nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius.
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Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex.
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He always thought that Touie's long illness would somehow prepare him for her death. He always imagined that grief anf guilt, if they followed, would be more clear-edged, more defined, more finite. Instead they seem like weather, like clouds constantly re-forming into new shapes, blown by nameless, unidentifiable winds.
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Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.
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Paris is certainly one of the most boastful of cities, and you could argue that it has had a lot to boast about: at various times the European centre of power, of civilisation, of the arts, and (self-advertisingly, at least) of love.
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Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, and how we lose it.
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