Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm, comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve?
Tags: time, philosophy, personality, nostalgia, merit, memory, mellow, history, age

Other Quotes by "Julian Barnes"

In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety.
Tags: novel, first, anxiety, hope
I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind.
Tags: height, being, grief, mind
I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.
Tags: instinct, survival
Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.
Tags: serious, book, reading, life
When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.
Tags: book, great, you, life
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