Julian Barnes Quotes

When you read something, and especially when you're reading compellingly great, that becomes part of your identity, at least while you're reading it. You become changed by reading it.

Rather than a teaching tool, I think a novel is more of a witnessing entity. A witnessing entity? What is that? I just want the reader to step in and experience it as a story.

I like literature that you respond to in some way. You laugh, you cry, you turn the light on - that's great, it's eliciting a response by proxy.

Read a book at the right age and it will stay with you for life.

When a young reader tells you that they'd never finished a book outside of school until they read yours, or that they really needed to hear something that one of your characters says or thinks... that's just rewarding and humbling.

Our poems will have failed if our readers are not brought by them beyond the poems.

If a reader comes across a story that makes them cry, you can be sure that the writer felt every single thing that makes the reader cry.

I think that you have to keep the reader front and centre if you're going to write something that people are going to love and be entertained by.

Every story takes its toll on me and leaves an impression on me.

I can't pick out one single book that had such a profound personal impact.

I go to great lengths to make certain situations feel right to the reader.

It's funny: I like being surprised as a reader, so it's difficult for me to spoil my own stuff.

I think for anybody reading the book they're going to get an idea in their heads of all those characters, and I think that once that gets fixed, it's quite hard to shake.

I'm hopefully making the reader feel a lot about the characters and then about their own life.

Your soul either feels lifted by something that you read, or it feels squashed by it.

It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.

The interesting thing about movies, it's not always - y'know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.

'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurtry and 'The Poisonwood Bible' by Barbara Kingsolver have stuck with me throughout my life, and I think that says a lot about an author's writing.

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.

I'm an optimistic person, so I like to leave my readers with a sense of hopefulness.

When I finished 'True History of the Kelly Gang,' I realised that Faulkner had not lost his power over me.

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

You do remember things that people say in movies. You remember particular lines and things that are funny. But, you also remember really strong images. Images have a way of bypassing your brain and hitting you emotionally.

To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember this happening was when I was 10, with a biography of Thomas Edison.

I think that fiction has a certain power.