English - Writer | January 19, 1946 -
It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.
Julian Barnes
MeStoryArtistBuildingsHouse
Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.
ChildrenNegativeRememberKindUs
In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.
InfluenceSometimesWriterRather
In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.
WorkNatureArtSocietyLiterature
Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.
PeopleKnownCharactersFewVery
Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.
LifeBookReadingPerfectDiscovery
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.
GriefMindPlanningHeightWrite
Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't.
LifeYouSaySheThingsWhere
The land of embarrassment and breakfast.
BreakfastLandEmbarrassment
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.
WifeYouPageMistressGetYour
I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious, I really hate it.
HateSeriousWayBeingEnglish
I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.
SurvivalSelf-PreservationInstinct
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