Julian Barnes Quotes

I remember the Washington in which I grew up as a genuine small town. Maybe this is true for everyone, that we all feel that the times in which we grew up were simpler, less complex.

To some, the '50s were a decade marked by the banal, the predictable.

I grew up in a uniform at school, and I sort of wish that I still had one and made to dress certain ways. My mother used to pick my clothes, I had hand-me-downs and things from her.

My wife Hillary sometimes accuses me of trying to reinvent the 19th century. In some ways she's right because I like things that I can understand and that aren't too complicated.

'Happy Days' is the type of show that represents the best we can be. It's something warm, something tactile when life was good and life was simple.

I'm just hoping my children will get enough of a foundation to remember what it was like before technology, how good that feels. Because I remember.

Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.

The world changes fast, and a lot of the old country folks have a hard time keeping up with it, and it makes them sad.

Any work that is born out of natural serendipity or reverts to simpler times is poignant for people - in any era.

My parents were obsessed with us being normal kids, so I never knew movie stars. They didn't want us to be Hollywood brats.

I developed a theory that, in many ways, the early 'Andy Griffith' episodes especially were an awful lot like a Capra movie. They were a lot like 'Mr. Deeds' or a lot like 'It's a Wonderful Life' in tone and presentation.

I am a country boy at heart.

I grew up in a very conservative home.

I loved growing up in a little town. I loved knowing people. I loved going to the store and running into people. I loved going into the store and having forgotten my bag, saying, 'Charge it, put it on my bill.' I loved going to the gas station and saying, 'Pete, fill it up.' I loved that continuity of life.

I think the '80s works for a TV show because it's the last time the world was simple. It was before the Internet really changed everything and made the world really small.

I'm old-fashioned and a square.

I know part of nostalgia is romanticising the past, but I love doing things in a slower way, and the glamour of bygone eras.

My parents really wanted me to have an arranged marriage when I was younger, but I think they have updated a bit with the times.

Even though my parents raised me in a very individualistic way, they were also strict and traditional, which was good. It was hard to sneak out! I think I was quite wild, but in some ways quite contained.

My parents, or Asian parents in general, they're like, 'You should be a doctor, a lawyer, or a banker' - all that's laid out. As a kid that's what I bought into, which is why I ended up going the corporate route initially.

Bread and football - that's how I grew up.

I grew up kissing books and bread.

When I was your age, we didn't have the Internet in our pants. We didn't even have the Internet not in our pants. That's how bad it was.

If you're still doing what mommy and daddy said for you to do (go to school, get a job, and save money), you're losing.