Talking It Over Quotes

“Love is just a system for getting someone to call you Darling after sex.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“I’ve always thought you are what you are and you shouldn’t pretend to be anyone else. But Oliver used to correct me and explain that you are whoever it is you’re pretending to be.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“You've got to be responsible for your own happiness - you can't expect it to come flopping through the door like a parcel.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“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.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“But I don't remember. I won't remember. Memory is an act of will, and so is forgetting.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded in ebullient despatches as the enemy falls back; then the beginning of a long, morale-sapping trudge with rations getting shorter and the first snowflakes upon your face. The enemy burns Moscow and you yield to General January, whose fingernails are very icicles. Bitter retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually you fall beneath a boy-gunner's grapeshot while crossing some Polish river not even marked on your general's map.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“I wish life was like banking,' I said. 'I don't mean it's straightforward. Some of it's incredibly complicated. But you can understand it in the end, if you try hard enough. Or there's someone, somewhere, who understands it, even if only afterwards, after it's too late. The trouble with life, it seems to me, is that it can turn out to be too late and you still haven't understood it.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“I don't ever want to get old. Spare me that. Have you the power? No, even you don't have the power, alas.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“There is violence in this supposedly tender heart of mine.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“Voleo bih da je život kao bankarstvo', rekao sam. 'Ne mislim doslovno. Ima tu vrlo komplikovanih stvari. Ali, na kraju sve shvatiš ako se samo potrudiš. Ili uvek postoji negde neko ko se razume, pa makar i naknadno, kad je već kasno. Nevolja sa životom, kako se meni čini, jeste da može već za sve da bude kasno, a da ti ipak i dalje ništa ne shvataš.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“Games are for childhood, and sometimes I think I lost my childhood young.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“When he's cheerful his tongue runs away with him, and he's depressed he can be unkind. So it's common sense not to let him into every are of your life.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“The thing I remember from the Letters Page in those antique days was the way the OBs signed off. There was Yours faithfully, Yours sincerely, and I have the honour to be, sir, your obedient servant. But the ones I always looked for - and which I took to be the true sign of an Old Bastard - simply ended like this:Yours etc.And then the newspaper drew even more attention to the sign-off by printing it:Yours &c.
Yours &c.I used to muse about that. What did it mean? Where did it come from? I imagined some bespatted captain of industry dictating his OB’s views to his secretary for transmission to the Newspaper of Record which he doubtless referred to with jocund familiarity as ‘The Thunderer’. When his oratorical belch was complete, he would say ‘Yours, etc,’ which Miss ffffffolkes would automatically transcribe into, ‘I have the honour to be, sir, one of the distinguished Old Bastards who could send you the label off a tin of pilchards and you would still print it above this my name,’ or whatever, and then it would be, ‘Despatch this instanter to The Thunderer, Miss ffffffolkes.’
But one day Miss ffffffolkes was away giving a handjob to the Archbishop of York, so they sent a temp. And the temp wroteYours, etc,just as she heard it andThe Timesreckoned the OB captain a very gusher of wit, but decided to add their own little rococo touch by compacting it further to &c., whereupon other OBs followed the bespatted lead of the captain of industry, who claimed all the credit for himself. There we have it:Yours &c.
Whereupon, as an ardent damp-ear of sixteen, I took to the parodic sign-off:Love, &c.Not all my correspondents unfailingly seized the reference, I regret to say. Onedemoisellehastened her own de-accessioning from the museum of my heart by informing me withhauteurthat use of the word etc., whether in oral communication or in carven prose, was common and vulgar. To which I replied, first, that ‘the word’ et cetera was not one but two words, and that the only common and vulgar thing about my letter - given the identity of its recipient - was affi xing to it the word that preceded etc. Alack, she didn’t respond to this observation with the Buddhistic serenity one might have hoped.
Love, etc.The proposition is simple. The world divides into two categories: those who believe that the purpose, the function, the bass pedal and principal melody of life is love, and that anything else -everythingelse - is merely an etc.; and those, those unhappy many, who believe primarily in the etc. of life, for whom love, however agreeable, is but a passing flurry of youth, the pattering prelude to nappy-duty, but not something as solid, steadfast and reliable as, say, home decoration. This is the only division between people that counts.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“Todos nós vamos ter cancêr ou uma doença cardíaca. há, basicamente, dois tipos de seres humanos, pessoas que refreiam suas emoções e pessoas que as liberam, rugindo. introvertidos e extrovertidos, se você preferir. os introvertidos, como é bem sabido, tendem a internalizar suas emoções, seu ódio e autodesprezo, e esta internalização, como é igualmente sabido, produz cancêr. os extrovertidos, por outro lado, liberam a energia, se enfurecem com o mundo, desviam seu autodesprezo para os outros, e este esforço excessivo, por um processo lógico, causa ataques do coração.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“Playing Cupid, I should have you know, isn’t just a matter of flying around Arcadia and feeling your tiny winkle throb when the lovers finally kiss. It’s to do with timetables and street maps, cinema times and menus, money and organisation. You have to be both jaunty cheerleader and lithe psychiatrist. You require the binary skill of being absent when present, and present when absent.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“My name is Stuart, and I remember everything.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“... The other half wanted to say, I love you, come away with me, sit on my knee, I'll always remember you. You so full of your past, me so full of my future.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“I was also gone in a sense that I was transformed, made over. You know that story of the man who wakes up and finds he's turned into a beetle? I was the beetle who woke up and saw the possibility of being a man.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“I think that in life you have to discover what you're good at, recognise what you can't do, decide what you want, aim for it, and try not to regret things afterwards.”
― Julian Barnes, Talking It Over

“Если слишком хорошо помнить своё прошлое, начнёшь ещё, пожалуй, винить его за настоящее.”
― Джулиан Барнс, Talking It Over

“Все беспокоились о том, что станется с любовью. А по-моему, так будет всегда. Всегда кажется, что настали ее последние дни.”
― Джулиан Барнс, Talking It Over

“...когда долго живешь с человеком, то постепенно теряешь способность приносить ему радость, а вот способность причинять боль остаётся прежней. И наоборот, конечно.”
― Джулиан Барнс, Talking It Over