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Is any novelist going to recognize the moment when he or she has nothing more to say? It is a brave thing to admit. And since as a professional writer you are full of anxiety anyway, you could easily misread the signs.

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
Since
Professional
Moment
Anyway
Moments
Anxiety
Nothing
Recognize
Misread
Thing
Easily
Novelist
Going
Brave
Signs
Writer
Novelists
Full
Admit

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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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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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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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WHORES. Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius.
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What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.
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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?
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Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.
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But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life’s business.
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The land of embarrassment and breakfast.
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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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Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.
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History is the lies of the victors.
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What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest? Or is it, more simply, that wanting to know the worst is love's favorite perversion.
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Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.
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Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.
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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.
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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]
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To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.
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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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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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