Julian Barnes: Use

Julian Barnes is English writer. Explore interesting quotes on use.

Julian Barnes: 154 quotes3 likes

“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.”

“Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

“And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

“That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

“Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

“History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us.”

Source: A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

“How rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at sea, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us.”

“I’ve always thought you are what you are and you shouldn’t pretend to be anyone else. But Oliver used to correct me and explain that you are whoever it is you’re pretending to be.”

Julian Barnes book Talking It Over

Source: Talking It Over

“Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, and how we lose it.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending