Quotes by Muriel Barbery

“The time of man is coming, and of this I am certain: neither death, nor life, nor the spirits, nor the present, nor the future, nor the stars, nor the abyss, nor any creature: nothing will keep fro...”

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

“Any game where the goal is to build territory has to be beautiful. There may be phases of combat, but they are only means to an end, to allow your territory to survive. One of the most extraordinar...”

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

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

“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 cer...”

“Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these t...”

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

“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.”

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

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

“What makes the strength of the 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, ...”

“...we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity. That's what the future is for:...”

“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,...”

“since destiny always rings three times...”

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

“Thinking back on it, this evening, with my heart and my stomach all like jelly, I have finally concluded, maybe thats what life is about: theres a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty,...”

“I suddenly felt my spirit expand, for I was capable of grasping the utter beauty of the trees.”

“There are days when I feel I have been able to grasp all there is to know in one single gaze, as if invisible branches suddenly spring out of nowhere, weaving together all the disparate strands of ...”

“With her it's as if a text was written so that we can identify the characters, the narrator, the setting, the plot, the time of the story, and so on. I don't think it has ever occurred to her that ...”