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Julian Barnes

Read through the most famous quotes from Julian Barnes




Young, middle-aged, elderly, old, dead: this was how life conjugated. (No, life was a noun, so this is how life declined. Yes, that was better in any case, life declined.


— Julian Barnes


#age

But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book.


— Julian Barnes


#life #love

What was the point of having a situation worthy of fiction if the protagonist didn't behave as he would have done in a book?


— Julian Barnes


#life #protagonist #reality #life

The best fiction rarely provides answers; but it does formulate the questions exceptionally well.


— Julian Barnes


#inspirational

What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together


— Julian Barnes


#progress #science #stupidity #science

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't.


— Julian Barnes


#books #did #explained #life #say

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.


— Julian Barnes


#embarrassment #land

As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.


— Julian Barnes


#front #get #i #kill #many






About Julian Barnes






Did you know about Julian Barnes?

Forster Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
1981 Somerset Maugham Award


List of works
Novels
Metroland (1980)
Before She Met Me (1982)
Flaubert's Parrot (1984) – shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Staring at the Sun (1986)
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989)
Talking It Over (1991)
The Porcupine (1992)
England England (1998) – shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Love etc (2000) – sequel to Talking it Over
Arthur & George (2005) – shortlisted for the Booker Prize
The Sense of an Ending (2011) – winner of the Booker Prize
Collections and non-fiction
Letters from London (Picador London 1995) – journalism from The New Yorker ISBN 0-330-34116-2
Cross Channel (1996) – stories
Something to Declare (2002) – essays
The Pedant in the Kitchen (2003) – journalism on cooking
The Lemon Table (2004) – stories
Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008) – memoir
Pulse (2011) – stories
Through the Window (2012) – essays
Works as Dan Kavanagh
Duffy (1980)
Fiddle City (1981)
Putting the Boot In (1985)
Going to the Dogs (1987)


Further reading
Peter Childs Julian Barnes (Contemporary British Novelists) Manchester University Press (2011)
Sebastian Groes & Peter Childs eds. At the age of 10 Barnes was told by his mother that he had "too much imagination". England England is a humorous novel that explores the idea of national identity as the entrepreneur Sir Jack Pitman creates a theme park on the Isle of Wight that duplicates the tourist spots of England.

Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is a contemporary English writer. Barnes has also won several literary prizes in France including the Prix Médicis for Flaubert's Parrot and the Prix Femina for Talking It Over.

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