Famous Julian Barnes Quotes

  • In life, every ending is just the start of another story. – Julian Barnes

    In life, every ending is just the start of another story.– Julian Barnes

  • But life never lets you go, does it? You can’t put down life the way you put down a book. – Julian Barnes

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

  • The mechanism of natural selection depends on the survival, not of the strongest, nor the most intelligent, but of the most adaptable. – Julian Barnes

    The mechanism of natural selection depends on the survival, not of the strongest, nor the most intelligent, but of the most adaptable.– Julian Barnes

  • May you be ordinary, as the poet once wished the new-born baby. – Julian Barnes

    May you be ordinary, as the poet once wished the new-born baby.– Julian Barnes

  • Opera cuts to the chase-”as death does. An art which seeks, more obviously than any other form, to break your heart. – Julian Barnes

    Opera cuts to the chase-”as death does. An art which seeks, more obviously than any other form, to break your heart.– Julian Barnes

  • wear flannel next to your skin, and never believe in eternal punishment. – Julian Barnes

    wear flannel next to your skin, and never believe in eternal punishment.– Julian Barnes

  • But I don’t remember. I won’t remember. Memory is an act of will, and so is forgetting. – Julian Barnes

    But I don’t remember. I won’t remember. Memory is an act of will, and so is forgetting.– Julian Barnes

  • …I need to return briefly to a few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty. – Julian Barnes

    …I need to return briefly to a few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty.– Julian Barnes

  • Was this their exact exchange? Almost certainly not. Still, it is my best memory of their exchange. – Julian Barnes

    Was this their exact exchange? Almost certainly not. Still, it is my best memory of their exchange.– Julian Barnes

  • He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself. – Julian Barnes

    He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.– Julian Barnes