To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity. Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things.
Muriel BarberyIn our world, that's the way you live your grown-up life: you must constantly rebuild your identity as an adult, the way it's been put together it is wobbly, ephemeral, and fragile, it cloaks despair and, when you're alone in front of the mirror, it tells you the lies you need to believe.
Muriel BarberyI 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 BarberyAs a child I often wondered whether I would be allowed to live such moments- to inhabit the slow, majestic ballet of the snowflakes, to be released at last from the dreary frenzy of time. Is that what it feels to be naked? All one's clothes are gone, yet one's mind is overladen with finery.
Muriel Barbery