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"If you turned your back on irony, it curdled into sarcasm. And what good was it then? Sarcasm was irony which had lost its soul."
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"Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual."

"Unless you stop him. Perhaps next we meet.""You'll be just as annoying?" I guessed.He fixed my with those warm brown eyes. "Or perhaps you could bring me up to speed on those modern courtship rituals."I sat there stunned until he gave me a glimpse of a smile-just enough to let me know he was teasing. Then he disappeared."Oh, very funny!" I yelled."

"The Fool held his breath. On long nights on the hard flagstones he had dreamed of women like her. Although, if he really thought about it, not much like her; they were better endowed around the chest, their noses weren't so red and pointed, and their hair tended to flow more. But the Fool's libido was bright enough to tell the difference between the impossible and the conceivably attainable, and hurriedly cut in some filter circuits."

"D'yer see it? This finger, laddie, could send ye to meet yer Maker!Sgt. Deisenburger stared at the black and purple nail a few inches from his face. As an offensive weapon it rated quite highly, especially if it was ever used in the preparation of food."

"Showing off is more ridiculous in instances where the thing that is being shown off was bought on credit."

"It is dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating," said the Queen presently. "What would you like best to eat?""Turkish Delight, please, your Majesty," said Edmund."

"Hey, guard! Ian hollered out loud. "Do you think we could get a bathroom break? The guard seemed to snicker as he pointed to the grass outside the cell. Eena smirked at how dead-on her thoughts had been after all. "Come on, Ian complained. "She can't do that, she's a girl. The soldier smiled wryly, a shrug communicating his indifference. Eena laughed in her mind. (I don't know what you think's so funny. You're the one who's gotta pee.) Oddly enough, that fact just made her laugh even more."

"I HAVE MADE THIS FOR YOU. She reached out and took a damp square of cardboard. Water dripped off the bottom. Somewhere in the middle, a few brown feathers seemed to have been glued on. 'Thank you. Er ... what is it?'ALBERT SAID THERE OUGHT TO BE SNOW ON IT, BUT IT APPEARS TO HAVE MELTED, said Death. IT IS, OF COURSE, A HOGSWATCH CARD.'Oh ...' THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A ROBIN ON IT AS WELL, BUT I HAD CONSIDERABLE DIFFICULTY IN GETTING IT TO STAY ON. 'Ah...'IT WAS NOT AT ALL COOPERATIVE.'Really ...?'IT DID NOT SEEM TO GET INTO THE HOGSWATCH SPIRIT AT ALL."

"I used to think that size does not count, until I realized that most people either find other people's faeces more disgusting than a bird's droppings, or they do not find the latter disgusting at all."
Explore more quotes by Julian Barnes

"What does the novel do? It tells beautiful, shapely lies which enclose hard, exact truths."

"Flaubert didn't just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together."

"Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance."

"His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion."

"If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what caused me to be like this, it's not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details."

"When I was still quite young I had a complete presentiment of life. It was like the nauseating smell of cooking escaping from a ventilator: you don't have to have eaten it to know that it would make you throw up."

"We live with such easy assumptions, don't we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it's all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it's not convenient--- it's not useful--- to believe this; it doesn't help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it."

"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 merit is not life's business."

"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 emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing--until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return."
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