The Elegance of the Hedgehog

by Muriel Barbery

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. That might deprive you of a few good moments in your childhood but it would save you a considerable amount of time as an adult—not to mention the fact that you’d be spared at least one traumatic experience, i.e. the goldfish bowl.

no one seems to have thought of the fact that if life is absurd, being a brilliant success has no greater value than being a failure. It’s just more comfortable. And even then: I think lucidity gives your success a bitter taste, whereas mediocrity still leaves hope for something.

suffer; I think that if you have decided to die, it is precisely because your decision is in the nature of things, so you must do it in a gentle way.

What is the point of dying if not to not suffer?

I find a body with beautiful movement or, failing that, a beautiful idea for the mind, well then maybe I’ll think that life is worth living after all.

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.

I only managed to get through my everyday life thanks to my ignorance of any alternatives.

To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent, condemns one, in our society, to a dark and disillusioned life, a condition one ought to accept at an early age. To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity.

You look at it with a mixture of anxiety and hope, you know how fragile life can be, you worry about accidents but, at the same time, you are satisfied with the knowledge that you’ve done what you were supposed to do, you’ve played your nurturing role: you feel reassured and, for a time, things feel safe.

It would be so much better if we could share our insecurity,

if we could all venture inside ourselves and realize that green beans and vitamin C, however much they nurture us, cannot save lives, nor sustain our souls.

Can’t you tell when a person hates himself? He becomes a living cadaver, it numbs all his negative emotions but also all the good ones so that he won’t feel nauseated by who he is.

this is the first time I have met someone who seeks out people and who sees beyond.

We never look beyond our assumptions and, what’s worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves. We don’t recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. If we actually realized this, if we were to become aware of the fact that we are only ever looking at ourselves in the other person, that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy.

As for me, I implore fate to give me the chance to see beyond myself and truly meet someone.

because he is truly talking to you, he is addressing himself to you. This is the first time I have met someone who cares about me when he is talking: he’s not looking for approval or disagreement, he looks at me as if he too say, “Who are you? Do you want to talk to me? How nice it is to be here with you!” That is what I meant by saying he is polite—this attitude that gives the other person the impression of really being there.