Muriel Barbery

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 teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there's this life we're struggling through full of shouting and tears and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck -- it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion.

— Muriel Barbery

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

— Muriel Barbery

I don't know if you have any idea what a high school in Paris is like in this day and age in the posh neighborhoods—but quite honestly, the slummy balloons of Marseille have nothing on ours. In fact, it may even be worse here, because where you have money, you have drugs—and not just a little bit and not just one kind.

— Muriel Barbery

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

— Muriel Barbery

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

— Muriel Barbery

I have read so many books. And yet, like most Autodidacts, I am never quite sure of what I have gained from them. 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 my reading. And then suddenly the meaning escapes, the essence evaporates and no matter how often I reread the same lines they seem to flee ever further with each subsequent reading and I see myself as some mad old fool who thinks her stomach is full because she's been reading the menu.

— Muriel Barbery

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

— Muriel Barbery

In our world, that's the way you live your grown-up life: you must constantly rebuild your identity as an adult, the way it's been put together it is wobbly, ephemeral, and fragile, it cloaks despair and, when you're alone in front of the mirror, it tells you the lies you need to believe.

— Muriel Barbery

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

— Muriel Barbery

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

— Muriel Barbery