quotes by Muriel Barbery

"Do you know that it is in your company that I have had my finest thoughts?"
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language. "
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"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."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

". . . maybe that's what life's all about: there's a lof of despair, but also the odd moments of beauty, where time is no longer the same . . . [like] something suspended . . . an elsewhere . . . an always within a never.
Yes, that's is, an always within a never."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside she is covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary--and terrible elegant. "
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"... c'est peut-être ça la vie : beaucoup de désespoir mais aussi quelques moments de beauté où le temps n'est plus le même. C'est comme si les notes de musique faisaient un genre de parenthèses dans le temps, de supension, un ailleurs ici même, un toujours dans le jamais.

Oui, c'est ça, un toujours dans le jamais."
— Muriel Barbery (L'élégance du hérisson)

"What makes the strength of a soldier isn't the energy he uses trying to intimidate the other guy by sending him a whole lot of signals, it's the strength he's able to concentrate within himself, by staying centered."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"We have a knowledge of harmony, anchored deep within. It is this knowledge that enables us, at every instant, to apprehend quality in our lives and, on the rare occasions when everything is in perfect harmony, to appreciate it with the apposite intensity. And I am not referring to the sort of beauty that is the exclusive preserve of Art. Those who feel inspired, as I do, by the greatness of small things will pursue them to the very heart of the inessential where, cloaked in everyday attire, this greatness will emerge from within a certain ordering of ordinary things and from the certainty that all is as it should be, the conviction that it is fine this way.
"
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"Civilization is the mastery of violence, the triumph, constantly challenged, over the aggressive nature of the primate. For primates we have been and primates we shall remain, however often we learn to find joy in a camellia on moss. This is the very purpose of education."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

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

"Moments like this act as magical interludes, placing our hearts at the edge of our souls: fleetingly, yet intensely, a fragment of eternity has come to enrich time...When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"In a split second of eternity, everything is changed, transfigured. A few bars of music, rising from an unfamiliar place, a touch of perfection in the flow of human dealings--I lean my head slowly to one side, reflect on the camellia on the moss on the temple, reflect on a cup of tea, while outside the wind is rustling foliage, the forward rush of life is crystalized in a brilliant jewel of a moment that knows neither projects nor future, human destiny is rescued from the pale succession of days, glows with light at last and, surpassing time, warms my tranquil heart. "
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment? "
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accession to simple, authentic and refined sensations, a license given to all, at little cost, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is the beverage of the wealthy and the poor; the tea ritual, therefore, has the extraordinary virtue of introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture of serene harmony. Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity. Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things..."
— Muriel Barbery

"To write entire pages of dazzling prose about a tomato -- for Pierre Arthens reviews food as if he were telling a story, and that alone is enough to make him a genius -- without ever seeing or holding the tomato is a troubling display of virtuosity."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"But that's not even the problem. What his sentence (Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach teach the teachers and those who can't teach the teachers go into politics.) means isn't that incompetent people have found their place in the sun, but that nothing is harder or more unfair than human reality: humans live in a world where the ultimate skill is mastery of language. This is a terrible thing because basically we are primates who've been programmed to eat, sleep, reproduce, conquer and make our territory safe, and the ones who are most gifted at that, the most animal types among us, always get screwed by the others, the fine talkers, despite these latter being incapable of defending their own garden or bringing rabbit home for dinner or procreating properly. Humans live in a world where the weak are dominant."
— Muriel Barbery

"The real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don't love you."
— Muriel Barbery (Gourmet Rhapsody)

"Pastries . . . can only be appreciated to the full extent of their subtlety when they are not eaten to assuage our hunger, when the orgy of their sugary sweetness is not destined to full some primary need but to coat our palate with all the benevolence of the world."
— Muriel Barbery (Gourmet Rhapsody)

"The raw tomato, devoured in the garden when freshly picked, is a horn of abundance of simple sensations, a radiating rush in one's mouth that brings with it every pleasure. . . . a tomato, an adventure."
— Muriel Barbery (Gourmet Rhapsody)

"The French are often, when it comes to wine, so formal that they border on the ridiculous."
— Muriel Barbery (Gourmet Rhapsody)

"To tell a group of adolescents who already know how to speak and write that that is the purpose of grammar is like telling someone that they need to read a history of toilets through the ages in order to pee and poop."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"I witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of me on the sheet, teaching me something that I neither knew nor thought I might want to know. This painless birth, like an unsolicited proof, gives me untold pleasure, and with neither toil nor certainty but the joy of frank astonishment I follw the pen that is guiding and supporting me."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"'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."
— Muriel Barbery

"Gli uomini vivono in un mondo dove sono le parole e non le azioni ad avere il potere, dove la massima competenza è il controllo del linguaggio."
— Muriel Barbery (L'élégance du hérisson)

"...per Colombe la vita è una battaglia perenne dove bisogna vincere distruggendo all'altro. "
— Muriel Barbery (L'élégance du hérisson)

"Fatevi una sola amica, ma sceglietela con cura. "
— Muriel Barbery (L'élégance du hérisson)

"Gli adolescenti credono di diventare adulti scimmiottando adulti rimasti bambini che fuggono davanti alla vita. "
— Muriel Barbery (L'élégance du hérisson)

"...e forse la più grande rabbia e la più grande frustrazione non sono la miseria, la disoccupazione o la mancanza di avvenire: la rabbia e la frustrazione derivano invece della sensazione di non appartenere a nessuna cultura perchè sei lacerato tra culture diverse, tra simboli incompatibili.

-Sui ragazzi che bruciavano le macchine nei sobborghi di Parigi- "
— Muriel Barbery (L'élégance du hérisson)

"Yes, our eyes may perceive, yet they do not observe; they may believe, yet they do not question; they may receive yet they do not search: they are emptied of desire, with neither hunger nor passion.(Renee Michel)"
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"God appeases our animal fears and the unbearable prospect that someday all our pleasures will cease."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"Don't let the cat out or the concierge in: this is the first principle of socialist ladies."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"Tutti pensano che i bambini non sanno niente. Viene da chiedersi se i grandi sono stati mai bambini."
— Muriel Barbery (Une gourmandise)

"So che sono tutti scontenti perche' nessuno ama la persona giusta, come dovrebbe essere, e non capiscono che ce l'hanno sopratutto con se' stessi. "
— Muriel Barbery (Une gourmandise)

"I barboni non sono mica tutti socialisti, e la poverta' non rende per niente rivoluzionari. "
— Muriel Barbery (Une gourmandise)

"Degustare e' un atto di piacere, raccontare questo piacere e' un fatto artistico, ma l'unica vera opera d'arte, in definitiva, e' il banchetto di un'altro. "
— Muriel Barbery (Une gourmandise)

"Un bravo marmista conosce la materia...il suo talento, infatti, non consiste nell'inventare forme, bensi' nel rendere manifeste quelle che erano invisibili."
— Muriel Barbery (Une gourmandise)

"Il crudo. Com'e' superficiale credere che consista nella brutta azione di divorare un prodotto non
preparato!
Tagliare il pesce crudo e' come tagliare la pietra. "
— Muriel Barbery (Une gourmandise)

"... they have never seen you ... I would recognize you anywhere. "
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"This pause in time, within time ... When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender that is only possible with another person? The peace of mind one experiences on one's own, one's certainty of self in the serenity of solitude, are nothing in comparison to the release and openness and fluency one shares with another, in close companionship ..."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed."
— Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

"The real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don't love you."
— Muriel Barbery (Gourmet Rhapsody)

"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."
— Muriel Barbery (Gourmet Rhapsody)

"A man who farts in bed . . . is a man who loves life."
— Muriel Barbery (Gourmet Rhapsody)

"Talent consists not in inventing shapes but in causing those that were invisible to emerge."
— Muriel Barbery (Gourmet Rhapsody)