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" To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock. "
Julian Barnes
Psychic
Objective
Us
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" 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
Paris
Us
Why
" In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence. "
Julian Barnes
Writer
Sometimes
Rather
" Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from its clutches. "
Julian Barnes
Time
Book
Promotion
" Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists. "
Julian Barnes
Destroy
Grief
Patterns
" In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety. "
Julian Barnes
Anxiety
First
Hope
" Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting. "
Julian Barnes
Known
Few
Characters
" I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people. "
Julian Barnes
Write
About
People
" The land of embarrassment and breakfast. "
Julian Barnes
Breakfast
Land
Embarrassment
" 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. "
Julian Barnes
Us
Remember
Negative
" 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
Planning
Falling
Grief
" What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible. "
Julian Barnes
Possible
Greater
Away
" 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
You
Wife
Front
" 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
She
Life
Say
" 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. "
Julian Barnes
Nature
Art
Society
" Do we tend to recall the most important parts of a novel or those that speak most directly to us, the truest lines or the flashiest ones? "
Julian Barnes
Important
Us
The Most Important
" 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. "
Julian Barnes
Book
Perfect
Reading
" The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable. "
Julian Barnes
Unpredictable
Book
Changes
" Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction. "
Julian Barnes
Tell
Journalism
Honest
" All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things. "
Julian Barnes
Lie
Night
You
" I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious, I really hate it. "
Julian Barnes
Serious
Hate
English
" When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. "
Julian Barnes
Deeper
Escape
Great
" I'm a complete democrat in terms of who buys my books. "
Julian Barnes
Democrat
Complete
Who
" 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
Communion
Art
Skill
" There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were. "
Julian Barnes
Bad
Readers
Were
" I am death-fearing. I don't think I'm morbid. That seems to me a fear of death that goes beyond the rational. Whereas it seems to me to be entirely rational to fear death! "
Julian Barnes
Fear
Beyond
Death
" I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation. "
Julian Barnes
Self-Preservation
Instinct
Survival
" 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
Power
Love
Most