Julian Barnes Quotes

It is very difficult for us to know we love somebody because it is an insecure position to be in. But in the end, it is important to be honest about your love because life is not that long.

We do not know what love is. We know the symptoms of it, the pleasure, the pain, the fear, the anxiety and so on. We try to solve the symptoms, which becomes a wandering in darkness. We spend our days and nights in this, and it is soon over in death.

I figured if I played in the no-man's land of intimacy, I would learn to be a performer.

I don't always know what I want to hear, but I'm gonna try and pull it out and sing it to you, and if you hear it the way I sing it to you, then a wall is broken.

How many relationships have we been in where its like, are we together, are we boyfriend and girlfriend? What does that even mean? We're too scared to ask the question, we're afraid of the answers. It's a learning curve.

Here's the thing: You rescue us every day in small, quiet ways, so why not in this way? Let us into your mystery, tell us how you would like to be loved, show us how to see you, really see you.

You won't kiss me for diamonds," he said, his voice slightly raspy, "but you will for chocolates?" Poppy nodded.

Your skin upon my skin, in the beating of our hearts, may the living let us in, before the dead tear us apart.

I asked her to look at me and after a few moments - (pause) - after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low) Let me in.

I have learned that in any significant or continuing relationship, feelings which are persistent had best be expressed. If they are expressed as feelings owned by me, the result may be temporarily upsetting but ultimately far more rewarding than any attempt to deny or conceal them.

I see you lying next to me, with words I thought i'd never speak, awake and unafraid, asleep or dead?

I wasn't really testing it on myself as much as I was learning from other people about what it meant to live and love with your whole heart, and then thinking, oh my god, I'm not doing that.

I look at my career and how I'm doing it now. I feel like there is something authentic in that process that I still try not to over manipulate. When I feel something, I try to listen to that.

It is human nature to look away from illness. We don't enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality.

Look, are you just fiddling around with me or what?" "I just want you to feel you're doing well. I hate for people o die embarrassed.

The most important key to a more romantic life: you have to be willing to pay attention

In love, as in life, one misheard word can be tremendously important. If you tell someone you love them, for instance, you must be absolutely certain that they have replied "I love you back" and not "I love your back" before you continue the conversation.

Love is the scent of a sleeping back, death a slight draft of bad breath.

Every time you choose to love, you have also just chosen to die.

I think that when you're in love, you progressively go back to who you are.

Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?

Death has more in common with Love than you might imagine.

I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow, and somehow, each of us will help the other live, and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.

An intimate relationship is one that allows you to be yourself.

When the time comes I will go joyfully. Whatever may be there, it will be real, without complication, without ridicule, without deception.