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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Paris is certainly one of the most boastful of cities, and you could argue that it has had a lot to boast about: at various times the European centre of power, of civilisation, of the arts, and (self-advertisingly, at least) of love. Julian Barnes Read Quote
I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind. Julian Barnes Read Quote
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. Julian Barnes Read Quote
Iconic Paris tells us: here are our three-star attractions, go thou and marvel. And so we gaze obediently at what we are told to gaze at, without exactly asking why. Julian Barnes Read Quote
Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction. Julian Barnes Read Quote
When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. Julian Barnes Read Quote
