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"He always thought that Touie's long illness would somehow prepare him for her death. He always imagined that grief anf guilt, if they followed, would be more clear-edged, more defined, more finite. Instead they seem like weather, like clouds constantly re-forming into new shapes, blown by nameless, unidentifiable winds."
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"Causes for attachment are created at the very time abhorrence occurs. Familiarity (acquaintance) up to a certain point will result in attachment and if it reaches 'ridge point' & goes past further, it will result in abhorrence."
"Jealousy is love in competition."
"Belikov is a sick, evil man who should be thrown into a pit of rabid vipers for the great offense he commited against you this morning.""Thank you." I said primly. Then, I considered. "Can vipers be rabid?""I don't see why not. Everything can be. I think. Canadian geese might be worse than vipers, though.""Canadian geese are deadlier than vipers?""You ever try to feed those little bastards? They're vicious. You get thrown to vipers, you die quickly. But the geese? That'll go on for days. More suffering.""Wow. I don't know whether I should be impressed or frightened that you've thought about all of this."
"You want things to remain the same, which they never can, and so you're wounded by your own feelings & resentful others don't seem to care..."
"I realised I got anxious because my true aspiration wasn't to become the chief of a multi-billion dollar, multi-national company that created widgets or some shit."
Explore more quotes by Julian Barnes
"How weird it would be to have around you only as many books as you have time to read in the rest of your life. And I remain deeply attached to the physical book and the physical bookshop."
"How do we seize the past? Can we ever do so? When I was a medical student some pranksters at the end-of-the-term dance released into the hall a piglet which had been smeared with grease. It squirmed between legs, evaded capture, squealed a lot. People fell over trying to grasp it, and were made to look ridiculous in the process. The past often seems to behave like that piglet."
"Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior."
"Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical."
"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?"
"Life versus Death becomes, as Montaigne pointed out, Old Age versus Death."
"Is there anything more plausible than a second hand?"
"History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us."
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