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The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.

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
None
Writer
Personal
Control
Partly
Moment
Temperament
Moments
Aesthetic
Littles
Charge
Little
Historical

More quotes by Julian Barnes

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Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?
Julian Barnes
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In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.
Julian Barnes
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Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex.
Julian Barnes
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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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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.
Julian Barnes
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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?
Julian Barnes
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Do we tend to recall the most important parts of a novel or those that speak most directly to us, the truest lines or the flashiest ones?
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.
Julian Barnes
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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.
Julian Barnes
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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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And perhaps it was also the case that, for all a lifetime's internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as. That was your nature, whether you liked it or not.
Julian Barnes
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[Literature is] a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts.
Julian Barnes
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I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious, I really hate it.
Julian Barnes
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I remember laughing with relief that the same old adolescent boredom goes on from generation to generation. ...the words took me back to my own years of stagnancy, and that terrible waiting for life to begin. [p. 68]
Julian Barnes
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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.
Julian Barnes
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I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.
Julian Barnes
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Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.
Julian Barnes
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If a man cannot tell what he wants to do, then he must find out what he ought to do. If desire has become complicated, then hold fast to duty.
Julian Barnes
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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.
Julian Barnes
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Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.
Julian Barnes