Muriel Barbery Quotes

When someone that you love dies..it's like fireworks suddenly burning out in the sky and everything going black.

People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd.

There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature.

Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty.

That's what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people.

I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.

We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die.

With the exception of love, friendship and the beauty of Art, I don't see much else that can nurture human life.

The real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don't love you.

When tea becomes ritual, it takes place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things.

Talent consists not in inventing shapes but in causing those that were invisible to emerge.

...what I dread more than anything else in this life is noise...silence helps you to go inward..anyone who is interested in something more than just life outside actually needs silence.

'Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is' is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that's not true, it's too late.

How to measure a life's worth? The important thing, said Paloma one day, is not the fact of dying, it is what you are doing in the moment of your death.

...I am an anomaly in the system, living proof of how grotesque it is, and every day I mock it gently, deep within my impenetrable self.

What is an aristocrat? A woman who is never sullied by vulgarity, although she may be surrounded by it.

We can be friends. We can be anything we want to be.

As always, I am saved by the inability of living creatures to believe anything that might cause the walls of their little mental assumptions to crumble.

A man who farts in bed . . . is a man who loves life.

People think that children don't know anything. It's enough to make you wonder if grownups were ever children once upon a time.

If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.

What is writing, no matter how lavish the pieces, if it says nothing of the truth, cares little for the heart, and is merely subservient to the pleasure of showing one's brilliance.

Beautiful things should belong to beautiful souls.

Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It's the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death.

What does art do for us? It gives shape to our emotions.

I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken.

I'll be searching for those moments of always within never. Beauty, in this world." - Paloma

Melancholy overwhelms me at supersonic speed.

If you want to heal Heal others And smile or weep At this very happy reversal of fate

As far as I can see, only psychoanalysis can compete with Christians in their love of drawn-out suffering.

To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent condemns one in our society to a dark and disillusioned life...to beauty all is forgiven.

So if there is something on the planet that is worth living for, I'd better not miss it, because once you're dead, it's too late for regrets, and if you die by mistake, that is really, really dumb.

Entrusting one's life is not the same as opening up one's soul.

To the rich, therefore, falls the burden of Beauty. And if they cannot assume it, then they deserve to die.

I am going to die, but that is of no importance.

I'm afraid to go into myself and see what's going on in there.

We never look beyond our assumptions and what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves.

I belong to the 8% of the world population who calm their apprehension by drowning it in numbers.

In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.

Levin delights in the forgetfulness that movement brings, where the pleasure of doing is marvellously foreign to the striving of the will.

boredom was born on a day of uniformity.

When illness enters a home, not only does it take hold of a body. It also weaves a dark web between hearts, a web where hope is trapped.

They didn't recognize me," I repeat. He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm. "It is because they have never seen you," he says. "I would recognize you anywhere.

... they have never seen you ... I would recognize you anywhere.

Maybe that's what being alive is about: so we can track down those movments that are dying.

shocked to realize how much vitality is required simply to support our primitive requirements, we wonder, bewildered, where Art fits in.

But the world, in its present state, is no place for princesses.

Tasting is an act of pleasure and writing about that pleasure is an artistic gesture, but the only true work of art, in the end, is another person's feast.

Because art is life, playing to other rhythms.

Live or die: mere consequences of what you have built. What matters is building well.