England, England Quotes

“Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“Was it the case that colours dimmed as the eye grew elderly? Or was it rather that in youth your excitement about the world transferred itself onto everything you saw and made it brighter?”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“Most people, in my opinion, steal much of what they are. If they didn't what poor items they would be.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“If a memory wasn't a thing but a memory of a memory of a memory, mirrors set in parallel, then what the brain told you now about what it claimed had happened then would be coloured by what had happened in between. It was like a country remembering its history: the past was never just the past, it was what made the present able to live with itself.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“And perhaps it was also the case that, for all a lifetime's internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as. That was your nature, whether you liked it or not.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“It is important to understand that in the modern world we prefer the replica to the original because it gives us the greater frisson. I leave that word in French because I think you understand it well that way.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“Martha was a clever girl, and therefore not a believer.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“- he couldn't believe how falling love with Martha made things simpler. No, that wasn't the right word, unless 'simpler' also included the sense of richer, denser, more complicated, with focus and echo. Half his brain pulsed with gawping incredulity at his luck; the other half was filled with a sense of long-sought, flaming reality. That was the word: falling in love with Martha made things real.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“An element of propaganda, of sales and marketing, always intervened between the inner and the outer person.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“Why slum it where people were burdened by yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that? By history? Here, on the Island, they had learnt how to deal with history, how to sling it carelessly on your back and stride out across the download with the breeze in your face.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“Why do you think this great nation of ours loves the Royal Family?
Gun Law. If we didn't have it, you'd be asking the opposite question.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“As she grew up, as her character was built, as she became headstrong rather than pert, and clever enough to know when to hide her cleverness, as she discovered friends and social life and a new kind of loneliness, as she came from country to town and began amassing her future memories, she admitted her mothers's rule: they made their mistakes, now you make your mistakes. And there was a logical consequence of this, which became part of Martha's creed: after the age of twenty-five, you were not allowed to blame anything on your parents. Of course, it didn't apply if your parents had done something terrible - had raped and murdered you and stolen all your money and sold you into prostitution - but in the average course of an average life, if you were averagely competent and averagely intelligent, and more so if you were more so, then you were not allowed to blame your parents. Of course you did, there were times when it was just too tempting. If only they'd bought me roller-skates like they promised, if only they'd let me go out with David, if only they'd been different, more loving, richer, cleverer, simpler. If only they'd been more indulgent; if only they'd been more strict. If only they'd encouraged me more; if only they'd praised me for the right things...None of that. Of course Martha felt it, some of the time, wanted to cuddle such resentments, but then she would stop and give herself a talking-to. You're on your own, kid. Damage is a normal part of childhood. Not allowed to blame anything on them anymore. Not allowed.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“If you're an old geezer in his rocker on the porch, you don't play basketball with the kids. Old geezers don't jump. You sit and make a virtue of what you have. And what you do is this: you make the kids think that anyone, anyone can jump, but it takes a wise old buzzard to know how to sit there and rock.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“She’d been imagining for the last fifteen or more years that if you disappeared, if you abandoned a wife and child, you did so for a better life: more happiness, more sex, more money, more of whatever was missing from your previous life.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“At university Martha had made friends with a Spanish girl, Cristina. The common history of their two countries, or at least the contentious part, lay centuries back; but even so, when Cristina had said, in a moment of friendly teasing, "Francis Drake was a pirate", she had said No he wasn't, because she knew he was an English hero and a Sir and an Admiral and therefore a Gentleman. When Cristina, more seriously this time, repeated, "He was a pirate", Martha knew that this was the comforting if necessary fiction of the defeated. Later, she looked up Drake in a British encyclopedia, and while the word "pirate" never appeared, the words "privateer" and "plunder" frequently did, and she could quite see that one person's plundering privateer might be another person's pirate, but even so Sir Francis Drake remained for her an English hero, untainted by this knowledge.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“You put us on a pedestal in order to look up our skirts.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“This was another skill women were meant to learn: when a man's story had come to an end. Mostly, it wasn't a problem, as the end was thumpingly obvious; or else the narrator started snorting with laughter in advance, which was always a pretty good clue. Martha had long ago decided only to laugh at things she found funny. It seemed a normal sort of rule; but most men found it rebuking.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“We may choose to freeze a moment and say that it all 'began' then, but as an historian I have to tell you that such labelling is intellectually indefensible. What we are looking at is almost always a replica, if that is the locally fashionable term, of something earlier. There is no prime moment.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“Молчать Марта умела виртуозно. Давным-давно она поняла — точнее, впитала из окружающей среды путем социального осмоса, — что женщина призвана разговорить мужчину, победить его скованность; тогда он развлечет тебя, расскажет, как устроен свет, впустит в свой внутренний мир и в итоге женится на тебе. К тридцати годам Марта осознала, что этот совет никуда не годится. В большинстве случаев последовать ему означало допустить, чтобы собеседник долго нудел тебе в ухо; а предполагать, будто мужчины могут кого-то впустить в свой внутренний мир, — вообще верх наивности. У многих внутреннего мира и в заводе нет — один внешний.
И потому вместо того, чтобы заранее одобрять мужские высказывания, она воздерживалась, смакуя могущество молчания. Некоторых мужчин это нервировало. Они заявляли, что такое молчание по сути своей враждебно. Говорили, что у нее «синдром пассивной агрессивности». Спрашивали, не феминистка ли она, используя это слово не как нейтральный термин — и тем более не как комплимент. «Но я ничего не говорила», — возражала она. «И все равно я твое неодобрение просто чую», — высказался один. Другой, как-то раз по пьяному делу после ужина, обернулся к ней, зажав в зубах сигару и гневно сверкая глазами, и сказал: «По-твоему, все мужчины делятся на два вида: те, кто уже сморозил какую-нибудь глупость, и те, кто сморозит глупость с минуты на минуту. Знаешь что, милая, катись-ка ты подальше».”
― Julian Barnes, England, England