Janet Holmes

“I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“When something is bothering me, I seek refuge. No need to travel far; a trip to the realm of literary memory will suffice. For where can one find more noble distraction, more entertaining company, more delightful enchantment than in literature?”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“When someone that you love dies..it's like fireworks suddenly burning out in the sky and everything going black.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“But many intelligent people have a sort of bug: they think intelligence is an end in itself. They have one idea in mind: to be intelligent, which is really stupid. And when intelligence takes itself for its own goal, it operates very strangely: the proof that it exists is not to be found in the ingenuity or simplicity of what it produces, but in how obscurely it is expressed.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog