Muriel Barbery

As 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.

I am rarely friendly—though always polite—I am not liked, but am tolerated nonetheless

I wonder if it wouldn’t be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd. That might deprive you of a few good moments in your childhood but it would save you a considerable amount of time as an adult

We are, basically, programmed to believe in something that doesn’t exist, because we are living creatures; we don’t want to suffer. So we spend all our energy persuading ourselves that there are things that are worthwhile and that that is why life has meaning.

mankind, doomed to its own ruin through desire, would do better to confine itself to its own needs