Although I've not been subbing much this month - too busy painting the new addition and doing remodel errands - I did manage to finish Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Wonderful story, wonderfully told. It's told in two different voices, which I make note of with my font, just as Barbery does in the book. And then there were the whole chapters that I wanted to include here, beautiful. Several had tears rolling down my face.
Page 90: We have never had our tea together in the morning, and this break with our usual protocol imbues the ritual with a strange flavor.
Page 91: At moments like this the web of life is revealed by the power of ritual, and each time we renew our ceremony, the pleasure will be all the greater for our having violated one of its principles.
Page 106: Ah, sweet, impromptu moment, lifting the veil of melancholy... In a split second of eternity, everything is changed, transfigured.
Page 108: The death of Pierre Arthens has been wilting my camellias.
Page 119: We live each day as if it were merely a rehearsal for the next.
Page 128: We have to live with the certainty that we'll get old and that it won't look nice or be good or feel happy. And tell ourselves that it's now that matters, to build something, now, at any price, using all our strength. Always remember that there's a retirement home waiting somewhere and we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying.
Page 143: Madame Michel has the elegance of a hedgehog: on the outside, she's covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary - and terribly elegant.
Page 162: There is one chocolate Florentine left, which I nibble out of greediness, with my front teeth, like a mouse. If you change the way you crunch into something, it is like trying something new.
Page 247: I have always been fascinated by the abnegation with which we human beings are capable of devoting a great deal of energy to the quest for nothing and to rehashing of useless and absurd ideas.
Page 250: Eternity: for all its invisibility, we gaze at it.
Page 279: Melancholy overwhelms me, at supersonic speed.
I also read Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal, by J.K. Rowling. Just keeping my Spanish up.
There was one quote I kept.
Page 21: -- Sí, sí es todo muy triste, pero domínate, Hagrid, o van a descubrirnos -- susurró la profesora McGonagall... (my translation: "Yes, yes it's all very sad, but control yourself, Hagrid, or they will discover us," whispered Professor McGonagall.)
It's the domínate that I like, which means control yourself. Dominate yourself? Made me smile.
