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The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

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
Viciously
Foolishly
Behaving
Patriotism
Greatest
Tell
Country

More quotes by Julian Barnes

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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.
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History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated.
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History is the lies of the victors.
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In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.
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Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?
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Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can.
Julian Barnes
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Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.
Julian Barnes
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The companionship of dead writers is a wonderful form of live friendship.
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To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.
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Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Julian Barnes
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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?
Julian Barnes
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His air of failure had nothing desperate about it rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion.
Julian Barnes
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Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry.
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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.
Julian Barnes
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This was long before the term 'single-parent family' came into use back then it was a 'broken home'.
Julian Barnes
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Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.
Julian Barnes
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Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence . Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for life-jacket.
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People in love, it is well known, suffer extreme conceptual delusions, the most common of these being that other people find your condition as thrilling and eye-watering as you do yourselves.
Julian Barnes
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The more you learn, the less you fear.
Julian Barnes
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The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.
Julian Barnes