quote · Legacy record
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 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. It's a bit like the black box airplanes carry to record what happens in a crash. If nothing goes wrong, the tape erases itself. So if you do crash, it's obvious why you did; if you don't, then the log of your journey is much less clear.
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 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. It's a bit like the black box airplanes carry to record what happens in a crash. If nothing goes wrong, the tape erases itself. So if you do crash, it's obvious why you did; if you don't, then the log of your journey is much less clear.
Approximate author period: c. 1946 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Julian Barnes
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1946 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from documented birth year 1946; activity date not established; Wikidata Q295431, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q295431 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 198384; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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