"What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves - the music of our being - which is transformed by some into...












Is there anything more plausible than a second hand?

More Julian Barnes quotes
"Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.
"Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm, comfortab...
"Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.
"you find yourself repeating, ‘They grow up so quickly, don’t they?’ when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays.
"...I need to return briefly to a few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty.
"Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of me...
"Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotion...
"And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.
"History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom a...
"And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us of time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, ...
"I remember, in no particular order:—a shiny inner wrist;—steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it;—gouts of sperm...