When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later.. later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches.
Julian BarnesI thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.
Julian BarnesIf these are indeed the spirits of Englishmen and Englishwomen who have passed over into the next world, surely they would know how to form a proper queue?
Julian BarnesThe ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable.
Julian Barnes