The Elegance Of The Hedgehog Quotes
"Because I am rarely friendly—though always polite—I am not liked, but am tolerated nonetheless: I correspond so very well to what social prejudice has collectively construed to be a typical French concierge that I am one of the multiple cogs that make the great universal illusion turn, the illusion according to which life has a meaning that can be easily deciphered."
"Apparently now and again adults take the time to sit down and contemplate what a disaster their life is. They complain without understanding and, like flies constantly banging against the same old windowpane, they buzz around, suffer, waste away, get depressed then wonder how they got caught up in this spiral that is taking them where they don’t want to go."
"I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: nothing more than kids without a clue about what has happened to them, acting big and tough when in fact all they want is to burst into tears."
"What is an aristocrat? A woman who is never sullied by vulgarity, although she may be surrounded by it."
"To write entire pages of dazzling prose about a tomato—without ever seeing or holding the tomato is a troubling display of virtuosity."
"The problem is that children believe what adults say and, once they’re adults themselves, they exact their revenge by deceiving their own children."
"In order for consciousness to be aroused, it must have a name."
"But in the world I live in there is less poetry than in a Japanese fisherman’s hut. And do you think it is normal for four people to live in four thousand square feet when tons of other people, perhaps some poètes maudits among them, don’t even have a decent place to live and are crammed together fifteen or twenty in two hundred square feet?"
"No, I’m referring to the beauty that is there in the world, things that, being part of the movement of life, elevate us. Grace, beauty, harmony, intensity."
"I may be indigent in name, position, and appearance, but in my own mind I am an unrivalled goddess."
"When man bites into the fruit, at last he understands. What does he understand? Everything."
"Humans live in a world where it's words and not deeds that have power, where the ultimate skill is mastery of language."
"The strong ones among humans do nothing. They talk and talk again."
"Humans live in a world where the weak are dominant."
"What do you drink, what do you read at breakfast? And I know who you are."
"In 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."
"But every morning, even if there’s been a nighttime session and he has only slept two hours, he gets up at six and reads his paper while he drinks a strong cup of coffee."
"Because truly nasty people hate everyone, to be sure, but most of all themselves."
"We talk about love, about good and evil, philosophy and civilization, and we cling to these respectable icons the way a tick clings to its nice big warm dog."
"The aim of the game is not to eat the other, but to build the biggest territory."
"You live, you die, these are consequences. It’s a proverb for playing go, and for life."
"What other reason might I have for writing this—ridiculous journal of an aging concierge—if the writing did not have something of the art of scything about it?"
"To build something, now, at any price, using all our strength. Always remember that there’s a retirement home waiting somewhere and so we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying."
"What matters is what you are doing when you die, and when June 16th comes around, I want to be building."
"If you offer a lady enemy macaroons from Chez Ladurée don't go thinking you'll be able to see beyond."
"Birch trees teach me that I am nothing and that I am deserving of life."
"Every time, it's a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there’s this life we’re struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck—it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing."
"When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces all lit up, the choir radiant. It is so beautiful."
"In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song."
"What is the purpose of Art? To give us the brief, dazzling illusion of the camellia, carving from time an emotional aperture that cannot be reduced to animal logic."
"We are filled with the energy of constantly wanting that which we cannot have, we are abandoned at dawn on a field littered with corpses, we are transported until our death by projects that are no sooner completed than they must be renewed."
"I don’t know what to do: if I set fire to the apartment, it could spread to Kakuro’s. To complicate the existence of the only adult person thus far who seems worthy of respect is not the right way to go about things."
"I also said to myself that Kakuro must have been like that himself when he was little, and I wondered if anyone back then had looked at him the way I was looking at Yoko, with delight and curiosity, just waiting to see the butterfly emerge from its cocoon, not knowing, yet trusting, the purpose of its wings."
"The clean simplicity of white, with no marble or embellishments—a common weakness among the privileged classes, who seek to make anything trivial seem luxurious—and the gentle softness of a sun-bright carpet are, as far as toilet fixtures go, the very prerequisites of consonance."
"It’s certainly not boring with you around. You are no ordinary person."
"To sum up: the queen bee, when she is ready, takes off on her nuptial flight, pursued by a cloud of drones. The first drone to reach her copulates with her, then dies, because after the act his genital organ remains stuck inside. So he is amputated and this kills him."
"Personally I think there is only one thing to do: find the task we have been placed on this earth to do, and accomplish it as best we can, with all our strength, without making things complicated or thinking there’s anything divine about our animal nature."
"Truth loves nothing better than simplicity of truth: that is the lesson Colombe Josse ought to have learned from her medieval readings."
"What is the purpose of intelligence if it is not to serve others?"
"This pause in time, within time … When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender that is possible only with another person?"
"Friendship across class lines is impossible."
"Because he doesn’t have to. And why doesn’t he have to? Because he doesn’t have enough competition."
"Too many rail workers, not enough plumbers. Personally, I would prefer the kolkhoz."
"It’s my birthday tomorrow and I would be happy to have you as my dinner partner."
"We’ll have other opportunities to chat, I’m sure."
"A mother who loves her children always knows when they are in trouble."
"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."
"I have become friends with a lovely twelve-year-old soul to whom I feel very grateful."
"Listening to Madame Michel, I understood something. I understood that I was suffering because I couldn’t make anyone else around me feel better."
"I am in a state of frenzied impatience to find out what will happen."
"What you have to experience before you die is a driving rain transformed into light."
"Ten years of a lifetime have crystallized in Leo."
"The aristocracy of the heart is a contagious emotion."
"Never again will I see those I love, and if that is what dying is about, then it really is the tragedy they say it is."
"It’s like fireworks suddenly burning out in the sky and everything going black."
"There’s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same."
"An always within never. Beauty, in this world."