Quote

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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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
Thought
Facing
Way
Imagined
Things
Mature
Turned
Responsible
Safe
Cowardly
Called
Realism
Rather
Avoiding

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Books are where things are explained to you life is where things aren't.
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[Literature is] a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts.
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Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.
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Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth. If it is not that - if it is not moral in its effect - then love is no more than an exaggerated form of pleasure.
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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.
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Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.
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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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Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?
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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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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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(on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.
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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.
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Nature is so exact, it hurts exactly as much as it is worth, so in a way one relishes the pain. If it didn't matter, it wouldn't matter.
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Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex.
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The best form of government is one that is dying, because that means it’s giving way to something else.
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One of the troubles is this: the heart isn't heart-shaped.
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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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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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WHORES. Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius.
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To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness.
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