Do you know what an involuntary act signifies? Psychoanalysts say that it reflects the insidious maneuvering of one’s hidden unconscious. What a pointless theory, in fact. When we do something involuntarily, this is the most visible sign of the power of our conscious will; for our will, when opposed by emotion, makes use all of its wiles to attain its ends.

— Muriel Barbery

Muriel Barbery Quotes

That is the way a summer rain can take hold in you- like a new heart, beating in time with another’s.

— Muriel Barbery

If there is one thing I despise, it is the perverse affectation of rich people who go around dressing as if they were poor, in second-hand clothes, ill-fitting gray wool bonnets, socks full of holes, and flowered shirts under threadbare sweaters. Not only is it ugly, it is also insulting: nothing is more despicable than a rich man’s scorn for a poor man’s longing.

— Muriel Barbery

What is particularly amusing about cocker spaniels is their swaying gait when they are in a playful mood: it’s as if they had tiny little springs screwed to their paws that cause them to bounce upward – but gently, without jolting. This also affects their paws and ears like the rolling of a ship, so cocker spaniels, like jaunty little vessels plying dry land, lend a nautical touch to the urban landscape: utterly enchanting.

— Muriel Barbery

French with Madame Fine is reduce to a long series of technical exercises whether we’re doing grammar or reading texts. 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 a text is written above all to be read and to arouse emotions in the reader. Can you imagine, she has never even asked us the question: “Did you like this book?

— Muriel Barbery

Do you know what a dream is? It is not a chimera engendered by our desire, but another way we absorb the substance of the world, and gain access to the same truths as those the mists unveil by concealing the visible and unveiling the invisible... There are no limits to our powers to accomplish and our natural spirit is stronger than anything.

— Muriel Barbery

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 there’s 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.

— Muriel Barbery

It’s a really weird way of looking at life to want to become an adult by imitating everything that is most catastrophic about adulthood.

— Muriel Barbery

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.

— Muriel Barbery

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 there’s anything divine about our nature.

— Muriel Barbery

So: have our civilizations become so destitute that we can only live in our fear of want? Can we only enjoy our possessions or our senses when we are certain that we shall always be able to enjoy them? Perhaps the Japanese have learned that you can only savor a pleasure when you know it is ephemeral and unique; armed with this knowledge, they are yet able to weave their lives.

— Muriel Barbery

Is it possible that we are all sharing the same frenetic agitation, even though we have not sprung from the same earth or the same blood and do not share the same ambition?

— Muriel Barbery

For where can one find more noble distraction, more entertaining company, more delightful enchantment than in literature?

— Muriel Barbery

I’m going to stop undoing, deconstructing, I’m going to start building. Even with Colombe I’ll try to do something positive. What matters is what you are doing when you die, and when June 16th comes around, I want to be building.

— Muriel Barbery

We have to live with the certainty that we’ll get old and that it won’t look nice or be good or feel happy. And tell ourselves that it’s nowt hat matters: to build something, now, at any price, using all our strength.

— Muriel Barbery

Adults have this neurotic relationship with death, it gets blown out of all proportion, they make a huge deal out of it when in fact it’s really the most banal thing there is.

— Muriel Barbery

The little girl spent most of her hours of leisure in the branches. When her family did not know where to find her, they would go to the trees, the tall beech to start with, the one that stood to the north above the lean-to, for that was where she liked to daydream.

— Muriel Barbery

Rain filtered in scattered drops from the leaves; everywhere, an extraordinary moss ruled supreme over its private kingdom; thick and moving, poised on root and stone, it seemed to glitter.

— Muriel Barbery

There’s nothing terribly original about the fact that I put music on in the morning, just that it sets the tone for the rest of the day. It’s very simple but also sort of complicated to explain: I believe that we can choose our moods: because we are aware that there are several mood-strata and we have the means to gain access to them.

— Muriel Barbery

If a person is not prepared to suffer, they are not prepared to live.

— Muriel Barbery

Where’s the risk?′ he asked. ‘The mere fact of being alive means that all the risks have already been taken.

— Muriel Barbery
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