..when I say that "he's a truly nasty man," I mean he has so thoroughly renounced everything good that he might have inside him that he's already like a corpse even though he's still alive. Because truly nasty people hate everyone, to be sure, but most of all themselves. Can't you tell when a person hates himself? He becomes a living cadaver, it numbs all his negative emotions but also all the good ones so he won't feel nauseated by who he is.
Muriel BarberyAs always, I am saved by the inability of living creatures to believe anything that might cause the walls of their little mental assumptions to crumble.
Muriel BarberyMusic plays a huge role in my life. It is music that helps me to endure ... well ... everything there is to endure.
Muriel BarberyThe real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don't love you.
Muriel BarberyWe musn't forget old people with their rotten bodies, old people who are so close to death, something that young people don't want to think about. We musn't forget that our bodies decline, friends die, everyone forgets about us, and the end is solitude. Nor must we forget that these old people were young once, that a lifespan is pathetically short, that one day you're twenty and the next day you're eighty.
Muriel BarberyBeauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. Itโs the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you see both their beauty and their death. ...Does this mean that this is how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance? Maybe thatโs what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying.
Muriel Barbery