Julian Barnes Quotes

It's odd but even when I was a kid, I would write about 'old and other times' as though I had a lot of years behind me. Now I do, so there is a difference in the weight of memory.

When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too—leave them behind. You don't yet know about the habit they have, of coming back. Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been.

I find myself thinking more about the past as I get older... maybe because there's just more of it to think about. At the same time, I'm less haunted by it than I was as a younger person. I guess that's probably the ideal: to reach a point where you have access to all of your memories, but you don't feel victimized by them.

There is something to be said for being older - and memories.

Every man is obsessed by the memories of his own youth.

One of the reasons why old people make so many journeys into the past is to satisfy themselves that it is still there.

I was looking at the photographs and I started thinking that there was a time when these weren't memories.

Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.

The past is not a package one can lay away.

[Memory] is a passion no less powerful or pervasive than love. It is [the ability] to live in more than one world, to prevent the past from fading, and to call upon the future to illuminate it.

Four years and everything was the same, except me.

I've been around a long time, and it seemed for the longest time like I was the young guy. Now, all of a sudden, I've got fans with beards telling me, "I used to watch you when I was a kid." So, I don't know what happened to all those years, but the little bit I do remember? It was definitely a fun ride.

I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old.

I don't know why it is, but sometimes I feel like I'm 60. It's like I've been around for a long time. I felt that way even when I was 8.

I am an aging Girl Scout.

When you finally go back to your old home, you find it wasn't the old home you missed but your childhood.

I remember way back when I was young, 10 years ago.

I'm growing old, I delight in the past.

Old is always fifteen years from now.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

Turning 60 had an impact on my heart and soul, I must say, because you're dealing with time: past, present, and future. You suddenly realize you've come down the road quite a ways.

When you are in the future, the past looks different.

I used to love getting older.

I remember when I was younger I used to sing that Beatles song, 'When I'm 64', and think that's light years away for me - I was 18 when it came out. Now here I am.

Young fighters dream of the future. Old fighters seek to recapture the past.