Home > Work > Through the Window: Seventeen Essays and a Short Story

Through the Window: Seventeen Essays and a Short Story QUOTES

Through the Window: Seventeen Essays and a Short Story QUOTES

1 " The best fiction rarely provides answers; but it does formulate the questions exceptionally well. "

― Julian Barnes , Through the Window: Seventeen Essays and a Short Story

2 " Als je een goed boek leest, ontsnap je niet aan het leven, je stort je er juist dieper in. Er kan sprake zijn van een oppervlakkige ontsnapping – in verschillende landen, mores, spraakpatronen – maar wat je in wezen doet is je begrip versterken van de subtiliteiten, paradoxen, vreugde, pijn en waarheden van het leven. Leven en lezen zijn geen onderscheiden maar symbiotische waarden. "

― Julian Barnes , Through the Window: Seventeen Essays and a Short Story

3 " When it comes to the dead, it is hard to retain, or posthumously acquire, treasuredom. Being a Great Writer in itself has little to do with the matter. The important factors are: 1) An ambassadorial quality, an ability to present the nation to itself, and represent it abroad, in a way it wishes to be presented and represented. 2) An element of malleability and interpretability. The malleability allows the writer to be given a more appealing, if not entirely untruthful, image; the interpretability means that we can all find in him or her more or less whatever we require. 3) The writer, even if critical of his or her country, must have a patriotic core, or what appears to be one. "

― Julian Barnes , Through the Window: Seventeen Essays and a Short Story

4 " Fiction, more than any other written form, explains and expands life. Biology, of course, also explains life; so do biography and biochemistry and biophysics and biomechanics and biopsychology. But all the biosciences yield to biofiction. Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, how it goes wrong, and how we lose it. Novels speak to and from the mind, the heart, the eye, the genitals, the skin; the conscious and the subconscious. What it is to be an individual, what it means to be part of a society. What it means to be alone. Alone, and yet in company: that is the paradoxical position of the reader. Alone in the company of a writer who speaks in the silence of your mind. "

― Julian Barnes , Through the Window: Seventeen Essays and a Short Story