Quote

History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us.

Julian Barnes

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Happened
History
Tell
Historians
Historian

More quotes by Julian Barnes

Image
[Literature is] a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts.
Julian Barnes
Image
Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.
Julian Barnes
Image
One of the troubles is this: the heart isn't heart-shaped.
Julian Barnes
Image
In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.
Julian Barnes
Image
Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?
Julian Barnes
Image
History is the lies of the victors.
Julian Barnes
Image
Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.
Julian Barnes
Image
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
Image
And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.
Julian Barnes
Image
Global warming is more of a blessing than a curse.
Julian Barnes
Image
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
Image
May you be ordinary, as the poet once wished the new-born baby.
Julian Barnes
Image
You lose the world for a glance? Of course you do. That is what the world is for: to lose under the right circunstances.
Julian Barnes
Image
I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.
Julian Barnes
Image
To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.
Julian Barnes
Image
You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?
Julian Barnes
Image
If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what caused me to be like this, it's not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details.
Julian Barnes
Image
You can put it another way, of course you always can.
Julian Barnes
Image
The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.
Julian Barnes
Image
The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity.
Julian Barnes