Top 100 Barnes's Quotes
#1. In the spirit of Julian Barnes's Flaubert's Parrot and Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life, Mr. Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage keeps circling its subject in widening loops and then darting at it when you least expect it ... a wild book.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
#2. There's a natural point in the development of any religion where the prophet becomes first a nuisance and then a positive liability. Just imagine Jesus walking into an evangelical church while the collection plate was being passed around
Adrian Barnes
#4. There's nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius.
Julian Barnes
#5. Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure.
Julian Barnes
#6. Everybody loves birdsong. It's a human need ... the sound of birds gives a deep, if sometimes almost unnoticed, pleasure
Simon Barnes
#7. God gave me you for the ups and downs. God gave me you for my days of doubt.
For when I think I've lost my way, there are no words here left to say, it's true.
God gave me you.
Dave Barnes
#8. The heart of the jealous knows the best and most satisfying love, that of the other's bed, where the rival perfects the lover's imperfections.
Djuna Barnes
#9. A couple's first task, it has always seemed to me, is to solve the problem of breakfast; if this can be worked out amicably, most other difficulties can too.
Julian Barnes
#10. Never miss it - that's the second biggest compliment I'd give to RealClearPolitics. The first is that it has become indispensable to anyone, in or outside of journalism, who's interested in politics, policy, or world affairs.
Fred Barnes
#11. In Nora's heart lay the fossil of Robin, intaglio of her identity, and about it for its maintenance ran Nora's blood. Thus the body of Robin could never be unloved, corrupt or put away. Robin was now beyond timely changes, except in the blood that animated her.
Djuna Barnes
#13. I'd ban coincidences, if I were a dictator of fiction. Well, perhaps not entirely. Coincidences would be permitted in the picaresque; that's where they belong. Go on, take them: let
Julian Barnes
#14. I love to walk into Borders or Barnes & Noble and see my books there. It's fabulous.
P.C. Cast
#15. That reading is an indulgence that only serves to distract from more important things in life." This statement came from Mr. Roberts. "Such as?" Anthony asked. "Such as the improvement of oneself, of one's household and of one's business.
Sophie Barnes
#16. You'll feel the sting even more poignantly if you buy into the system's credo that the more you have, and the more you own, the happier you will be. If this is the case, then you're
Joe Barnes
#17. I am a worm in comparison with His Excellency. I am a worm.' 'Yes, that's just it, you are a worm indeed.
Julian Barnes
#18. Well," a female voice said. "What have we here?"
"Here," Bethany said, responding to the woman's rhetorical question, "we have a teenager. And she's pissed.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#21. Isn't the most reliable form of pleasure, Flaubert implies, the pleasure of anticipation? Who needs to burst into fulfilment's desolate attic?
Julian Barnes
#22. I'm not Team Gale or Team Peeta. I'm Team Katniss ... the core story in the Hunger Games trilogy has less to do with who Katniss ends up with and more to do with who she is - because sometimes, in books and in life, it's not about the romance.
Sometimes, it's about the girl.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#23. One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet's curtain calls is the Royal Ballet's dancing.
Clive Barnes
#24. The simple truth - every day is precious. When it's gone, it never comes back to you.
Emilie Barnes
#25. Anyone who claims that truth is stranger than fiction has never gazed into a writer's mind, or read my stories.
Lucian Barnes
#26. Someone tried to kill me, and I'm going swimming. I'm going swimming, because it doesn't matter. I'm going swimming, because I don't matter. I'm going swimming, because that's what Claires do. We swim and we daydream and we read and we wait for someone to care, and they never, ever, ever do.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#27. Obama specializes in knocking down straw men. 'I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves,' he said, implying that's the view of Republicans. It's the view of almost no one.
Fred Barnes
#28. It's the little details in life that make all the difference.
Emilie Barnes
#29. We are beginning to wonder whether a servant girl hasn't the best of it after all. She knows how the salad tastes without the dressing, and she knows how life's lived before it gets to the parlor door.
Djuna Barnes
#30. Casey doesn't trust him."
"Casey doesn't trust anyone," I replied. "He's paranoid like that. I mean, come on, he's a werewolf who installed a nanny cam in his kids' room." I pointed my spoon at Ali for emphasis. "A nanny cam.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#31. Aren't you supposed to be taking my order?' I asked.
'Bite me. And then you can tell me what's wrong.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#32. Now I see that night does something to a person's identity, even when asleep.
Djuna Barnes
#33. Forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on.
Julian Barnes
#34. Life in the fast lane," Michael's reply. "You have to adjust for inflation.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#36. So," I said climbing to my feet and changing the subject ASAP, "I had a dream last night someone tried to burn me alive, and I'm not entirely sure it was a dream."
Devon stiffened. Chase's pupils pulsed.
Subject successfully changed.
"Now who's ready to eat?
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#37. At a social event she and I would normally have attended together, an acquaintance came up and said to me, simply, "There's someone missing." That felt correct, in both senses.
Julian Barnes
#38. Origami Striptease reads like William S. Burroughs and Djuna Barnes howling at a brutal paper moon.
Susan Stinson
#39. Time's many paradoxes. For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully. Nowadays
Julian Barnes
#40. They have some pretty tough gun laws in Japan, as they do in any other civilized country in the world, and they're not killing each other off with firearms. You have very violent films in Europe, yet it's not causing the mayhem we see in our streets routinely here.
Michael D. Barnes
#41. Well, in one sense, I can't know what it is that I don't know. That's philosophically self-evident.
Julian Barnes
#42. Perhaps I just feel safer with the history that's been more or less agreed upon.
Julian Barnes
#44. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it's not convenient
it's not useful
to believe this; it doesn't help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it. [p. 69]
Julian Barnes
#45. Me and my books, in the same apartment: like a gherkin in its vinegar.
Julian Barnes
#46. But that's one advantage of fiction, you can speed up time.
Julian Barnes
#47. What I am telling you is that Matta had a way of making you feel comfortable and that's probably why he had nine wives because he made them feel comfortable and then uncomfortable later.
Robert Barnes
#48. But I'm interested in the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia. I hear there are some of the worst Matisses there. I like seeing bad art by good artists. It's inspiring. I'm able to identify with them. It makes them real.
Jemima Kirke
#49. But the whole idea of the transformation ... mystery, transformation, and manipulations - those were the things that Marcel was a magician at. That's his magic.
Robert Barnes
#50. Let me share some facts with you about the law in most of our country. California is in many ways a little different from the rest of the world, and California has better gun laws than many states, although California's need to be improved.
Michael D. Barnes
#51. Religion's crucial role in the lives of many people ... is rejected out of hand by the political community, especially the press.
Fred Barnes
#52. I want a more difficult life, that's all. What I really want is a first-rate life. I may not get it, but the only chance I have lies in getting out of a second-rate life. I may fail completely, but I do want to try. It's to do with me, not you; so don't worry.
Julian Barnes
#53. I don't need your permission to search your locker. The headmaster's tone drew my attention back in his direction. This, I inferred from the rise in volume, was supposed to be the voice of authority. If you didn't need my permission, I thought, then why did you ask for it?
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#54. Highly readable, compelling analysis of America's current political crises
Craig Barnes
#55. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own.
Julian Barnes
#56. She was gracious and yet fading, like an old statue in a garden, that symbolizes the weather through which it has endured, and is not so much the work of man as the work of wind and rain and the herd of the seasons, and though formed in men's image is a figure of doom.
Djuna Barnes
#57. It is doubtful if a more extensive anthology of errors (William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) concerning the personality and policies of Hitler and the causes and responsibility for the Second World War has ever been assembled, even in war time.
Harry Elmer Barnes
#58. Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it's still the eyes we look at, isn't it? That's where we found the other person, and find them still.
Julian Barnes
#59. After all, it is not where one washes one's neck that counts but where one moistens one's throat.
Djuna Barnes
#60. Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary
Julian Barnes
#61. I cannot explain what's between us, Lady Newbury, other than to say that I have an uncanny urge to kiss you whenever we meet.
Sophie Barnes
#62. there's something wrong with any art that makes a woman all bust
Djuna Barnes
#63. There's nothing in all the world as much fun as talk. When you're talking, that is, with the right person.
Margaret Ayer Barnes
#64. Blame someone else, that's always your first instinct. And if you can't blame someone else, then start claiming the problem isn't a problem anyway. Rewrite the rules, shift the goalposts.
Julian Barnes
#65. You grew old first not in your own eyes, but in other people's eyes; then, slowly, you agreed with their opinion of you.
Julian Barnes
#66. We're not responsible for the bustling and hustling that may go on here. Lots of people bustle, and some hustle. But that's their business, and a very old one.
Pancho Barnes
#67. That's the thing, when you play younger characters they're always less casual. You're hungrier or more naive. Those things wane in time.
Ben Barnes
#69. One thing I learned a long time ago as a prosecutor is that it's tough to get people to obey a law if there is not penalty for breaking it.
Roy Barnes
#70. You know, when someone hurts my feelings, somehow it does not comfort me to know that it was deliberate ... On the other hand, knowing that someone else thinks they are assholes helps a great deal."
"I think that's some kind of rule for the universe.
John Barnes
#71. A mass of dust, world's momentary slave, Is man, in state of our old Adam made, Soon born to die, soon flourishing to fade.
Barnabe Barnes
#72. Nobody says these things - it's against the rules - but deep inside we know that we are, each of us, unknowable and ultimately alone, even when we love. Most
Adrian Barnes
#73. Making my way out of the bedroom, I found the loft empty, a visceral reminder that it had always been my sister's choice not to know me.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#74. But if you're very clever, I think there's something that can unhinge you if you're not careful.
Julian Barnes
#75. One cup poured into another makes different waters; tears shed by one eye would blind if wept into another's eye. The breast we strike in joy is not the breast we strike in pain; any man's smile would be consternation on another's mouth.
Djuna Barnes
#76. People who shop at Barnes and Noble voted Ulysses the best novel of the last century, and who's to tell them different? There was a point when I would have liked to, but apparently that's just because I'm a bitch.
Dale Peck
#77. Writers of either gender ought to be able to do the opposite sex-that's one basic test of competence, after all.
Julian Barnes
#78. I said,'What's your problem?' Asshole." There was a question behind his question, and that shadow question was 'Do you want to dance?
Adrian Barnes
#79. Most actors are drawn towards historical tellings because it's one of the most simple forms of storytelling.
Ben Barnes
#80. The best form of government is one that is dying, because that means it's giving way to something else.
Julian Barnes
#81. I take it Asher called you?" "What's your endgame here, Henry? Why are you going?
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#82. It seemed to us philosophically self-evident that suicide was every free person's right: a logical act when faced with illness or senility; a heroic one when faced with torture or the avoidable deaths of others; a glamourous one in the fury of dissappointed love (see: Great Literature).
Julian Barnes
#83. If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what caused me to be like this, it's not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details.
Julian Barnes
#84. Devon: "Why, Bryn, I do believe he's given her your pen."
Bryn: "Well, get Freud on the phone. He'll have a field day with this one.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#85. Historians need to treat a participant's own explanation of events with a certain scepticism. It is often the statement made with an eye to the future that is the most suspect.
Julian Barnes
#86. There's a little truth in all jive, and a little jive in all truth.
Leonard Barnes
#87. We were getting ready to cross into another pack's territory, and my second-in-command was making spirit fingers.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#88. Remorse, etymologically, is the action of biting again: that's what the feeling does to you. Imagine the strength of the bite when I reread my words. They seemed like some ancient curse I had forgotten even uttering.
Julian Barnes
#89. For all a lifetime's internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as.
Julian Barnes
#90. When he's cheerful his tongue runs away with him, and he's depressed he can be unkind. So it's common sense not to let him into every are of your life.
Julian Barnes
#92. Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch just announced that he is stepping down after three years. When asked if he's looking for a new job, he was like, 'Nah, just browsing.'
Jimmy Fallon
#93. Ivy gave the woman's hand a firm squeeze before letting it go. "What do you need?" she asked. "We're holding up." That, too, sounded like a rote reply, recited over and over again in hopes that it might somehow become the truth.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
#94. The rainbow in place of the unicorn? Why didn't God just restore the unicorn? We animals would have been happier with that, instead of a big hint in the sky about God's magnanimity every time it stopped raining.
Julian Barnes
#95. In Jewish folk music, despair is disguised as the dance. And so, truth's disguise was irony.
Julian Barnes
#96. If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that it's yours.
Julian Barnes
#97. It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.
Julian Barnes
#98. If the writer were more like a reader, he'd be a reader, not a writer. It's as uncomplicated as that.
Julian Barnes
#99. Gustave's last years are arid and solitary. He
Julian Barnes
#100. Love is anti-mechanical, anti-materialist: that's why bad love is still good love. It may make us unhappy, but it insists that the mechanical and the material needn't be in charge
Julian Barnes
