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
In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety. Julian Barnes
Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists. Julian Barnes
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
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
The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable. Julian Barnes
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
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
All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things. Julian Barnes
I think writing about unhappiness is probably the source of my popularity, if I have any-after all, most people are unhappy, don't you think? Philip Larkin
In everyone there sleeps. A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make. By loving others, but across most it sweeps. As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures. Philip Larkin