Quote

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.

Muriel Barbery

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Muriel Barbery
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: May 28
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Anfa
Stars
Simpler
Start
Bowl
Ends
Bowls
Right
Absurd
Children
Aim
Life
Wouldn
Like
Wonder
People
Teach
Goldfish

More quotes by Muriel Barbery

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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, or sustain our souls.
Muriel Barbery
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Maybe that's what being alive is about: so we can track down those movments that are dying.
Muriel Barbery
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If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.
Muriel Barbery
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That's what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people.
Muriel Barbery
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In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.
Muriel Barbery
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Most people, when they move, well they just move depending on whatever's 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.
Muriel Barbery
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With the exception of love, friendship and the beauty of Art, I don't see much else that can nurture human life.
Muriel Barbery
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I won't get any better by punishing the people I can't heal.
Muriel Barbery
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Entrusting one's life is not the same as opening up one's soul.
Muriel Barbery
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I know that they're all unhappy because nobody loves the right person the way they should and because they don't understand that it's really their own self that they're mad at.
Muriel Barbery
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Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty.
Muriel Barbery
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When illness enters a home, not only does it take hold of a body. It also weaves a dark web between hearts, a web where hope is trapped.
Muriel Barbery
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I may know that the world is an ugly place, I still don't want to see it.
Muriel Barbery
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I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken.
Muriel Barbery
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..if you dread tomorrow, it's because you don't know how to build the present, you tell yourself you can deal with it tomorrow, and it's a lost cause anyway because tomorrow always ends up becoming today, don't you see?
Muriel Barbery
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Don't worry Renee, I won't commit suicide and I won't burn a thing. Because from now on, for you, I'll be searching for those moments of always within never. Beauty, in this world.
Muriel Barbery
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To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity. Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things.
Muriel Barbery
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. . . maybe that's what life's all about: there's a lof of despair, but also the odd moments of beauty, where time is no longer the same . . . [like] something suspended . . . an elsewhere . . . an always within a never. Yes, that's is, an always within a never.
Muriel Barbery
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Civilization is the mastery of violence, the triumph, constantly challenged, over the aggressive nature of the primate. For primates we have been and primates we shall remain, however often we learn to find joy in a camellia on moss. This is the very purpose of education.
Muriel Barbery
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Poverty is a reaper: it harvests everything inside us that might have made us capable of social intercourse with others, and leaves us empty, purged of feeling, so that we may endure all the darkness of the present day.
Muriel Barbery