Toxos e Libros

“[H]umans live in a world where it's words and not deeds that have power, where the ultimate skill is mastery of language. This is a terrible thing because basically we are primates who've been programmed to eat, sleep, reproduce, conquer and make our territory safe, and the ones who are most gifted at that, the most animal types among us, always get screwed by the others, the fine talkers, despite these latter being incapable of defending their own garden or bringing a rabbit home for dinner or procreating properly. Humans live in a world where the weak are dominant. This is a terrible insult to our animal nature, a sort of perversion or a deep contradiction.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“..when I say that "he's a truly nasty man," I mean he has so thoroughly renounced everything good that he might have inside him that he's already like a corpse even though he's still alive. Because truly nasty people hate everyone, to be sure, but most of all themselves. Can't you tell when a person hates himself? He becomes a living cadaver, it numbs all his negative emotions but also all the good ones so he won't feel nauseated by who he is.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“Vivir, morir: no son más que consecuencias de lo que se ha construido.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent, condemns one, in our society, to a dark and disillusioned life, a condition one ought to accept at an early age. To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity. Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things – some sort of balancing of the scales offered by nature to those less favored among her children – no, it is a superfluous plaything that exists only to enhance the value of the jewel.
Pg 47.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog