Grimsrud Barnes Quotes

I looked at the people playing, walking, loafing, hurrying, or sauntering across the little park in front of us. How many terrible stories were there, just there in front of me, never to be spoken? ~ John Barnes

Home is the people who love you. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

It had all begun, very precisely, he told his mind, on the morning of the 28th of January 1936, at Arkhangelsk railway station. No, his mind responded, nothing begins just like that, on a certain date at a certain place. It all began in many places, and at many times, some even before you were born, in foreign countries, and in the minds of others. - ~ Julian Barnes

When one wants to become cognizant of the color and the texture of the soil, one does not get a ladder; one gets a shovel. When one wants to get into touch with the texture of the universal mind, one does not go to Boston; one goes to the Bowery. ~ Djuna Barnes

She was right off that scale, stranger; hurricane force nine was a gentle breeze where she came from. ~ Julian Barnes

Make a change today that will serve you for many more years. ~ Emilie Barnes

You can't love someone without imaginative sympathy, without beginning to see the world from another point of view. You can't be a good lover, a good artist or a good politician without this capacity (you can get away with it, but that's not what I mean). Show me the tyrants who have been great lovers. ~ Julian Barnes

I'd take a physical fight over Touchy-Feely Share Time, hands down ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

It had been a slow and painful business, discovering that the theory of love did not match the reality of life. It was like expecting to be able to write a symphony because you had once read a handbook of composition. ~ Julian Barnes

Listen to them again: 'I love you.' Subject, verb, object: the unadorned, impregnable sentence. The subject is a short word, implying the self-effacement of the lover. The verb is longer but unambiguous, a demonstrative moment as the tongue flicks anxiously away from the palate to release the vowel. The object, like the subject, has no consonants, and is attained by pushing the lips forward as if for a kiss. 'I love you.' How serious, how weighted, how freighted it sounds. ~ Julian Barnes

I think every film actor secretly wants to be a rock star as well; just that part of the job which requires the extrovert in you. Even if you've become an actor because it's your way of hiding in plain sight, there's still part of you which has that craving. ~ Ben Barnes

The fact that you don't hate him for this breaks my heart. And if we weren't leaving because of what they'd done to you, we'd be leaving because the pack has twisted you enough to make you think that it's okay for someone to treat you that way. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I love you." For a start, we'd better put these words on a high shelf; in a square box behind glass which we have to break with our elbow; in a bank. We shouldn't leave them lying around the house like a tube of vitamin C. If the words come too easily to hand, we'll use them without thought; we won't be able to resist. Oh, we say we won't, but we will. We'll get drunk, or lonely, or - likeliest of all - plain damn hopeful, and there are the words gone, used up, grubbied. We think we might be in love and we're trying out the words to see if they're appropriate? How can we know what we think till we hear what we say? Come off it; that won't wash. These are grand words; we must make sure we deserve them. Listen to them again: "I love you. ~ Julian Barnes

A Girl is gone! A Girl is lost! A simple Rustic Maiden but Yesterday swung upon the Pasture Gate, with Knowledge nowhere, yet is now, to-day, no better than her Mother, and her Mother's Mother before her! Soiled! Despoiled! Handled! Mauled! Rumpled! Rummaged! Ransacked! No purer than Fish in Sea, no sweater than Bird on Wing, no better than Beasts of Earth! ~ Djuna Barnes

I'm a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet under a cow pat. ~ Djuna Barnes

Caroline: 'You know Sora. I don't. It will hurt you. It won't hurt me. Nothing hurts me.'
Lake: 'Liar. Just breathing hurts you so bad, you want to beat the snot out of something. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Where did you find construction guys swapping dirty jokes in proto-Númenorean?" Aura asked.

"On construction sites. Is that coffee ready? ~ John Barnes

We will never forget those like my great-grandfather who fought at Vicksburg. ~ Roy Barnes

At best you have one of those debilitating conditions which come in many forms, and which some people decline to admit actually exist. ~ Julian Barnes

Of course you would, Mitt," Reagan said. "Well, I'm glad we understand each other, and I think your father would be proud of you being in his old spot, and I want you to know that when I'm choosing my Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, your resumé will be on the very top of the pile. It's been great chatting with you but you know, I have to find a vice presidential candidate, and soon."

"Ha, ha, ha, ah it's been great chatting with you, too, Mr. President, and - "

Reagan cocked his head slightly, smiled, and caught the eye of a minion; a moment later Romney had been deposited outside the door like a discarded room service tray, having barely had time to shift from ha, ha, ha back to ah…ah… ~ John Barnes

A mass of dust, world's momentary slave, Is man, in state of our old Adam made, Soon born to die, soon flourishing to fade. ~ Barnabe Barnes

Problems associated with the menstrual cycle are now commonplace. The majority of teenagers whom I have seen suffer problems such as PMS, severe cramping, and irregular or heavy cycles. Severe hypothyroidism may cause the menses to stop. Dr. Barnes noted his patients with menstrual problems usually suffered many other telltale symptoms of hypothyroidism. Mine do as well. A large majority of menstrual problems resolve after treatment with dessicated thyroid. ~ Mark Starr

There are people out there who get annoyed at the story that Djuna barnes, rather than identify as a lesbian, preferred to say that she 'just loved Thelma.' Gertrude Stein reputedly made similar claims, albeit not in those exact terms, about Alice. I get why it's politically maddening, but I've also always thought it a little romantic - the romance of letting an individual experience of desire take precedence over a categorical one. ~ Maggie Nelson

We souls on foot, with foot-folk meet: For we that cannot hope to ride For ease or pride, have fellowship. ~ William Barnes

They told him he was killing monsters, and then they made him kill people. He thought it was just me who was different, and he didn't go through with killing me. He thought there was a chance that it wasn't too late. That everyone he'd killed really had been a dangerous Null. That he really was a hero, working in the shadows to make the world a better place for people who'd never even looked his way. That he wasn't just an unimportant little boy raised like an animal and let out of the cage only when The Society wanted someone dead.
He wanted to believe that, and he just found out he was wrong. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being. And only recently I'd been going on about how the witnesses to our lives decrease, and with them our essential corroboration. Now I had some all too unwelcome corroboration of what I was, or had been. ~ Julian Barnes

Grief, like death, is banal and unique. So, a banal comparison. When you change your make of car, you suddenly notice how many other cars of the same sort there are on the road. They register in a way they never did before. When you are widowed, you suddenly notice all the widows and widowers coming towards you. Before, they had been more or less invisible, and they continue to remain so to the other drivers, to the unwidowed. ~ Julian Barnes

We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. ~ Julian Barnes

I won't say I told you so. But let's just take a moment of silence to think about the fact that I was right. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?'
'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly.
'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated ...
'Finn?'
'"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." (quoting Patrick Lagrange) ~ Julian Barnes

I carry it all with me, in the quiet pools and strong currents of my being. I fill my hands with the black dirt left by the river's birth. I believe that what I hold in my hands is memory: like the river, it takes what it touches, carrying it along until all that remains is the bed over which the water flows. ~ Kim Barnes

My dad is a doctor, a professor of psychiatry, and my mum is a psychotherapist. ~ Ben Barnes

The ability to see and examine himself; the ability to make moral decisions and act on them; the mental and physical courage of his suicide. "He took his own life" is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands - and then out of them. How few of us - we that remain - can say that we have done the same? We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. ~ Julian Barnes

The point is, bring joy to your surroundings. ~ Emilie Barnes

There is violence in this supposedly tender heart of mine. ~ Julian Barnes

Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery. ~ Julian Barnes

This was hopeless. In a novel, Adrian wouldn't just have accepted things as they were put to him. What was the point of having a situation worthy of fiction if the protagonist didn't behave as he would have done in a book? Adrian should have gone snooping, or saved up his pocket money and employed a private detective; perhaps all four of us should have gone off on a Quest to Discover the Truth. Or would that have been less like literature and too much like a kids' story? ~ Julian Barnes

Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth. If it is not that - if it is not moral in its effect - then love is no more than an exaggerated form of pleasure. ~ Julian Barnes

People recognize actors that they see regularly, like people they see on the television every week. ~ Ben Barnes