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
Start
Bowl
Ends
Bowls
Right
Absurd
Children
Aim
Life
Wouldn
Like
Wonder
People
Teach
Goldfish
Stars
Simpler

More quotes by Muriel Barbery

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Tasting is an act of pleasure and writing about that pleasure is an artistic gesture, but the only true work of art, in the end, is another person's feast.
Muriel Barbery
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If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.
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.
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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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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
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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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The real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don't love you.
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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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.
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Melancholy overwhelms me at supersonic speed.
Muriel Barbery
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...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: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people.
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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Moments like this act as magical interludes, placing our hearts at the edge of our souls: fleetingly, yet intensely, a fragment of eternity has come to enrich time...When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things.
Muriel Barbery
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What is writing, no matter how lavish the pieces, if it says nothing of the truth, cares little for the heart, and is merely subservient to the pleasure of showing one's brilliance.
Muriel Barbery
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We never look beyond our assumptions and what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others we just meet ourselves.
Muriel Barbery
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I may be indigent in name, position, and in appearance, but in my own mind I am an unrivaled goddess -
Muriel Barbery
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But the world, in its present state, is no place for princesses.
Muriel Barbery
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If you want to heal Heal others And smile or weep At this very happy reversal of fate
Muriel Barbery
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A man who farts in bed . . . is a man who loves life.
Muriel Barbery
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...I am an anomaly in the system, living proof of how grotesque it is, and every day I mock it gently, deep within my impenetrable self.
Muriel Barbery