Julian Barnes Quotes about Writing

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Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction.

Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction.

Julian Barnes

Writing, Thinking, Fiction

Julian Barnes, Vanessa Guignery, Ryan Roberts (2009). “Conversations with Julian Barnes”, p.65, Univ. Press of Mississippi

When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world

Julian Barnes

Writing, Tasks, Fiction

Julian Barnes, Vanessa Guignery, Ryan Roberts (2009). “Conversations with Julian Barnes”, p.65, Univ. Press of Mississippi

The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.

Julian Barnes

Book, Writing, Helping

Julian Barnes (1984). “Flaubert's parrot”, Vintage

Poets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible ‘I’…. Then again, poets seem able to turn bad love – selfish, shitty love – into good love poetry. Prose writers lack this power of admirable, dishonest transformation. We can only turn bad love into prose about bad love. So we are envious (and slightly distrustful) when poets talk to us of love.

Julian Barnes

Selfish, Good Love, Writing

Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry.

Julian Barnes

Beautiful, Art, Writing

Julian Barnes (1985). “Flaubert's parrot”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind.

Julian Barnes

Grief, Fall, Writing

"Julian Barnes: The sense of another ending". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. March 30, 2013.

Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.

Julian Barnes

Writing, Literature, Realizing

Julian Barnes (1984). “Flaubert's parrot”, Vintage

The imagination doesn't crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever's there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes nothing at all. And in the years of glut there is always a slatted wooden tray in some cool, dark attic, which the writer nervously visits from time to time; and yes, oh dear, while he's been hard at work downstairs, up in the attic there are puckering skins, warning spots, a sudden brown collapse and the sprouting of snowflakes. What can he do about it?

Julian Barnes

Writing, Dark, Years

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.

Julian Barnes

Writing, Ideas, People

Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well enough alone? Why aren't the books enough?

Julian Barnes

Book, Writing, Doe

Flaubert's Parrot ch. 1 (1984)

Irony ... may be defined as what people miss.

Julian Barnes

Writing, People, Missing

I'm one of those writers who started off writing novels and came to writing short stories later, partly because I didn't have the right ideas, partly because I think that short stories are more difficult. I think learning to write short stories also made me attracted toward a paring down of the novel form.

Julian Barnes

Writing, Thinking, Ideas

"Conversation: Julian Barnes, Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize". "Art Beat" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. November 8, 2011.