Julian Barnes Quotes

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

You put books out into the world, and people form their own visuals and images and attachments to characters; those characters become part of them, and they have their feelings about them.

Reading is an art form, and every man can be an artist.

When I was growing up, a lot of books affected me, but I never wrote letters to the author or anything like that. I'm always mindful that there are probably a whole bunch of people reading my books like that, too.

The act of reading a story is sacred, and people build images and all that stuff.

There are books that are made for you to sit and puzzle over and spend time with.

Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.

As I read, I start to form clear ideas of the characters and allow myself to be a proper conduit for this author's voice so that you will feel you have been on a seductive audio journey.

I had started to feel that somewhere in the second half of the 20th century, the idea of page-turning as a good thing had been lost. You were getting books that were the equivalent of absolutely beautifully prepared dishes of food that didn't taste like anything much.

Reading asks that you bring your whole life experience and your ability to decode the written word and your creative imagination to the page and be a co-author with the writer, because the story is just squiggles on the page unless you have a reader.

When I have a book I enjoy, I'm partly in the book. I'm not just observing it.

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

This is what I have discovered - and it has been a gift in itself - that books live over and over again in different people's minds. That I might mean one thing as I write, but a reader's experiences will take it somewhere else. That is like a conversation, I think. It is a true connecting up.

When we read a book, we have a blurry image that's kind of physical but blurry. But we have an emotional image also. We have an emotional connection to the character.

When I read books, I actually really love imagining whomever I want to in the character's role. I get such vivid pictures on my own that that is a big part of the experience for me.

Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a time that I didn't love writing and reading. When I was really young, my mother would read poems to me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe - I am sure I didn't understand it, but I loved it.

As an author, I really hate a reader like me. There's no loyalty.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having to read a poem twice. Or even a book.

Teenage readers also have a different relationship with the authors whose work they value than adult readers do. I loved Toni Morrison, but I don't have any desire to follow her on Twitter. I just want to read her books.

Most scholarly books we read for the information or insight they contain. But some we return to simply for the pleasure of the author's company.

I love 'To Kill A Mockingbird' - it seems to offer up new layers every time you read it. I also love Kate Atkinson's 'Behind The Scenes At The Museum' - that's the book that started me writing.

I do think digital media encourages speed-reading, which can be fine if one is simply seeking information. But a serious novel or work of history or volume of poetry is an experience one should savor, take time over.

Few Amazon punters will explore a book with the depth of an 800-word review.

I would like my novels to be read the way I read the novels I love.

When someone says to me, 'I love your book - I read it in a day,' I want to tell them to go back and read it again.