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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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Muriel Barbery
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: May 28
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Anfa
Care
Brilliance
Littles
Cares
Little
Showing
Merely
Nothing
Pieces
Matter
Says
Writing
Pleasure
Lavish
Heart
Truth
Subservient

More quotes by 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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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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They didn't recognize me, I repeat. He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm. It is because they have never seen you, he says. I would recognize you anywhere.
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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Maybe that's what being alive is about: so we can track down those movments that are dying.
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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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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Entrusting one's life is not the same as opening up one's soul.
Muriel Barbery
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To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent condemns one in our society to a dark and disillusioned life...to beauty all is forgiven.
Muriel Barbery
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We don't recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. If we actually realized this, if we were able to become aware of the fact that we are only ever looking at ourselves in the other person, that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy.
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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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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Live or die: mere consequences of what you have built. What matters is building well.
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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To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity. Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things.
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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The raw tomato, devoured in the garden when freshly picked, is a horn of abundance of simple sensations, a radiating rush in one's mouth that brings with it every pleasure. . . . a tomato, an adventure.
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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Art is emotion without desire.
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