Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't.
– Julian Barnes
People in love, it is well known, suffer extreme conceptual delusions, the most common of these being that other people find your condition as thrilling and eye-watering as you do yourselves.
– Julian Barnes
The land of embarrassment and breakfast.
– Julian Barnes
The writer's life is full of frailty and defeat like any other life. What counts is the work. Yet the work can quite easily be buried, or half-buried, by the life.