Julian Barnes Way Quotations

I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious, I really hate it.

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

The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable.

You can put it another way, of course; you always can.

When you’re young you prefer the vulgar months, the fullness of the seasons. As you grow older you learn to like the in-between times, the months that can’t make up their minds. Perhaps it’s a way of admitting that things can’t ever bear the same certainty again.

We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them.

Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can.