Julian Barnes Great Quotations

That form is very freeing, ... It's a great relief for the novelist not to have to be there in the way a third-person narrator implies. If you get rid of all that -- that judging entity -- you just leave the character alone with the reader.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

It's the great drama, the great unknowable of most of our lives, ... We don't all paddle up the Amazon in a canoe and get shot at, but we do the equivalent of that (in our relationships).

I just read the new novel by Jay McInerney, who is a friend of mine. And I did so with great apprehension, because it takes place around the time of those attacks. But I thought he handled it beautifully, since he comes at it from a bit of a side angle.

What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.