Quotes by Muriel Barbery

There are only two moments when everything is possible in this life, said Petrus, when one drinks, and when one makes up stories.

Im afraid to go into myself and see whats going on in there.

Clara looked at Maria and tried to understand what she must do so that Maria would be able to see her. But the little French girl cast all around her the bronze of infinite solitude.

To write a profound thought, I have to put myself onto a very special stratum, otherwise the ideas and words just dont come. I have to forget myself and at the same time be superconcentrated. But its not a question of the will, it is a mechanism I can set in motion or not, like scratching my nose or doing a backward roll.

Most people, when they move, well they just move depending on whatevers around them. At this very moment, as I am writing, Constitution the cat is going by with her tummy dragging close to the floor. This cat has absolutely nothing constructive to do in life and still she is heading toward something, probably an armchair.

The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects, a concept which I find intellectually interesting, but unfortunately our cats have such drooping bellies that this does not apply to them.

... we absolutely mustnt forget it. We mustnt forget old people with their rotten bodies, old people who are so close to death, something that young people dont want to think about (so it is to retirement homes that they entrust the care of accompanying their parents to the threshold, with no fuss or bother). And wheres the joy in these final hours they ought to be making the most of? Theyre spent in boredom and bitterness, endlessly revisiting memories. We mustnt forget that our bodies decline, friends die, everyone forgets about us, and the end is solitude. Nor must we forget that these old people were young once, that a lifespan is pathetically short, that one day youre twenty and the next day youre eighty.

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.

Just as teardrops, when they are large and round and compassionate, can leave a long strand washed clean of discord, the summer rain as it washes away the motionless dust can bring to a persons soul something like endless breathing.

Wine is the refined jewel that only a grown woman will prefer to the sparkling trinkets adored by little girls.

Personally I think there is only one thing to do: find the task we have been placed on this earth to do, and accomplish it as best we can, with all our strength, without making things complicated or thinking theres anything divine about our animal nature. This is the only way we will ever feel that we have been doing something constructive when death comes to get us.

Because from now on, for you, Ill be searching for those moments of always within never/Beauty, in this world.

This is eminently true of many happy moments in life. Freed from the demands of decision and intention, adrift on some inner sea, we observe our various movements as if they belonged to someone else, and yet we admire their involuntary excellence.

She was dark-haired, fierce; she wore two drop earrings made of crystal; her face was a pure oval tickled with dimples; her skin was golden; and her laugh was like a fire in the night. But on her face you could also read the concentration of a soul whose life is entirely inward, and a mischievous gravity which acquires a silver patina with age.

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

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

“So if there is something on the planet that is worth living for, Id better not miss it, because once youre dead, its too late for regrets, and if you die by mistake, that is really, really dumb.”

“Because beauty consits of its own passing, just as we reach for it. Its the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their movement and their death.”