Muriel Barbery

Renee is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building on the Left Bank. To the residents she is honest, reliable and uncultivated - an ideal concierge. But Renee has a secret. Beneath this conventional facade she is passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her self-important employers. Down in her lodge, Renee is resigned to living a lie; meanwhile, several floors up, twelve-year-old Paloma Josse is determined to avoid a predictably bourgeois future, and plans to commit suicide on her 13th birthday. But the death of one of their privileged neighbours will bring dramatic change to number 7, Rue de Grenelle, altering the course of both their lives forever.

The elegance of the hedgehog

cedar winslow

No one seems to have thought of the fact that if life is absurd, being a brilliant success has no greater value than being a failure. It's just more comfortable.

How distressing to stumble on a dominant social habitus, just when one was convinced of one's own uniqueness in the matter! Distressing, and perhaps even a bit annoying. 

We live each day as if it were merely a rehearsal for the next.

Gradually, his movements are freed from the shackles of his will, and he goes into a light trance which gives his gestures the perfection of conscious, automatic motion, without thought or calculation, and the scythe seems to move of its own accord.

We have given up trying to meet others, we just meet ourselves. We don't recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. 

By beguiling our eyes, television releases our mind from the great work of making meaning. 

If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.

What does Art do for us? It gives shape to our emotions, makes them visible and, in so doing, places a seal of eternity upon them

ayoni

There are times however, when life becomes a phantom comedy. As if aroused from a dream, we watch ourselves in action and, shocked at the realisation of how much vitality is required simply to support our primitive requirements, we wonder, bewildered, where Art fits in. All our frenzied nudging and posturing suddenly become utterly insignificant; our cosy little nest is reduced to some futile barbarian custom, and our position in society, hard-won and eternally precarious, is but a crude vanity.

The elegance of the hedgehog quotes

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