Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot Quotes
The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.
The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.
What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.
Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.
The best form of government is one that is dying, because that means it’s giving way to something else.
Irony - The modern mode: either the devil’s mark or the snorkel of sanity.
The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.
If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.
He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.
To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.
Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.
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
Me and my books, in the same apartment: like a gherkin in its vinegar.