Flaubert's Parrot

by Julian Barnes

I don’t much care for coincidences. There’s something spooky about them: you sense momentarily what it must be like to live in an ordered, God-run universe, with Himself looking over your shoulder and helpfully dropping coarse hints about a cosmic plan.

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.

Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.