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.