Some people are incapable of perceiving in the object of their contemplation the very thing that gives it its intrinsic life and breath, and they spend their entire lives conversing about mankind as if they were robots, and about things as though they have no soul and must be reduced to what can be said about them - all at the whim of their own subjective inspiration.
Muriel BarberyThe real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don't love you.
Muriel BarberyMaybe that's what being alive is about: so we can track down those movments that are dying.
Muriel BarberyMoments 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 BarberyAs far as I can see, only psychoanalysis can compete with Christians in their love of drawn-out suffering.
Muriel BarberyWhen someone that you love dies..it's like fireworks suddenly burning out in the sky and everything going black.
Muriel BarberyWhat makes the strength of the soldier isn't the energy he uses trying to intimidate the other guy by sending him a whole lot of signals, it's the strength he's able to concentrate within himself, by staying centered. That Maori player was like a tree, a great indestructible oak with deep roots and a powerful radiance- everyone could feel it. And yet you also got the impression that the great oak could fly, that it would be as quick as the wind, despite, or perhaps because of, its deep roots.
Muriel Barbery