Quotes By Author: julian barnes

“Everyone has their love story. Everyone. It may have been a fiasco, it may have fizzled out, it may never even have got going, it may have been all in the mind, that doesn’t make it any less real. Sometimes, it makes it more real. Sometimes, you see a couple, and they seem bored witless with one another, and you can’t imagine them having anything in common, or why they’re still living together. But it’s not just habit or complacency or convention or anything like that. It’s because once, they had their love story. Everyone does. It’s the only story.”

“But that was the nature of relationships: there always seemed to be an imbalance of one sort or another.”

“You’re still in it. You’ll always be in it. No, not literally. But in your heart. Nothing ever ends, not if it’s gone that deep. You’ll always be walking wounded. That’s the only choice, after a while. Walking wounded, or dead. Don’t you agree?”

“Я хочу встретить такого мужчину, который, когда узнаешь его получше, будет таким же, каким кажется, когда вы только познакомились. Я хочу встретить такого мужчину, который звонит, если пообещал позвонить и приходит домой, если пообещал, что придет. Я хочу встретить такого мужчину, которого устраивает то, какой он есть. Я хочу встретить такого мужчину, который хочет встретить такую женщину, как я. Ведь это не слишком много? Хотя, как утверждает моя подруга Марсель, это все равно, что хотеть луну с неба и звезды впридачу.”

“He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.”

“Dingen die eenmaal weg zijn, kunnen niet teruggehaald worden, dat wist hij nu wel. Een klap, eenmaal uitgedeeld, kan niet worden ingetrokken. Woorden, eenmaal uitgesproken, kunnen niet onuitgesproken worden gemaakt. We mogen verdergaan alsof er niets verloren, niets gedaan, niets gezegd is, we mogen beweren het allemaal te vergeten, maar ons diepste wezen vergeet niet, omdat we voor altijd veranderd zijn.”

“And in your opinion, the notion that everything works out in the end, and the counter-notion that nothing ever does, are both equally banal.”

“You remembered your past in cheerful terms because this validated your existence. You didn’t have to see your life as any kind of triumph – his own had hardly been that – but you did need to tell yourself that it had been interesting, enjoyable, purposeful.”

“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?”

“They grow up so quickly, don’t they?” when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays. Margaret’s”

“What had Old Joe Hunt answered when I knowingly claimed that history was the lies of the victors? “As long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated.” Do we remember that enough when it comes to our private lives?”

“They grow up so quickly, don’t they?” when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays.”

“Is there anything more plausible than a second hand?”

“Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing–until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.”

“Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.”