Pages 294-295

         “'And you too look like you're doing well,' he says, with a kindly gaze.

         'Really? Well, there have been a few changes that have been good for me.'

         'You know, I didn't come back here to see the apartment or the people, here. I'm not even sure they'd recognize me; I even brought my ID card, just in case you yourself didn't recognize me. No, I came because there's something I can't remember, something that helped me a lot, already when I was sick and then afterwards, when I was getting better.'

         'And you think I can help?'

         'Yes, because you were the one who told me the name of those flowers one day. In the flower bed, over there”-he points toward the far side of the courtyard- “there are some pretty little red and white flowers, you planted them there, didn't you? And one day I asked you what they were but I wasn't able to remember the name. And yet I used to think about those flowers all the time, I don't know why. They're nice to look at, and when I was so bad off I would think about those flowers, and it did me good. So I was in the neighborhood just now and I thought, I am going to ask Madame Michel, maybe she can tell me.'

         Slightly embarrassed, he waits for my reaction.

         'It must seem weird, no? I hope I'm not scaring you, with this flower business.'

         'No, not at all. If only I'd known the good they were doing you...I'd have planted them all over the place!'

         He laughs, like a delighted child.

         'Ah, Madame Michel, you know, it practically saved my life. That in itself is a miracle! So, can you tell me what they're called?'

         Yes my angel, I can. Along the pathways of hell, breathless, one's heart in one's mouth, a faint glow: they are camellias.

         'Yes,' I say. 'They are camellias.'

         He stares at me, wide-eyed. A tear slips across his waiflike cheek.

         'Camellias...' he says, lost in a memory that is his alone. 'Camellias, yes.' He repeats the word, looking at me again. 'That's it. Camellias.'

        I feel a tear on my own cheek.

        I take his hand.

        'Jean, you cannot imagine how happy I am that you came by here today.'

        'Really?' He looks astonished. 'But why?'

        Why?

        Because a camellia can change fate.”

                                                                                     -Muriel Barbary (294-295)

Muriel's camellias

        "The camellia against the moss of the temple, the violet hues of the Kyoto mountains, a blue porcelain cup-this sudden flowering of pure beauty at the heart of ephemeral passion: is this not something we all aspire to? And something that, in our Western civilization, we do not know how to attain?

         The contemplation of eternity within the very movement of life" 

                                                                                                 -Muriel Barbary (101)

The Munekata Sisters in The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Quotes of Ozu's The Munekata Sisters, in The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbary.
Pages 99-100

THE FATHER
And the Moss Temple! The light made the moss even more splendid.
SETSUKO
And the camellia on the moss, too.

THE FATHER
Oh, did you notice? How beautiful it was! (Pause.) There are beautiful things in Old Japan. (Pause.) Insisting that it's all bad...I find that outrageous.   

SETSUKO,her face radiant  
Tell me, Mariko, why are the mountains of Kyoto violet?
MARIKO,mischeviously
It's true. They look like azuki bean paste. 
SETSUKO,smiling
It's such a lovely color.

SETSUKO
True novelty is that which does not grow old, despite the passage of time.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog quotes

“I may be indigent in name, position, and in appearance, but in my own mind I am an unrivaled goddess -”

“I have finally concluded, maybe that's what life is about: there's a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It's as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never. Yes, that's it, an always within never.” 

“I have read so many books. And yet, like most Autodidacts, I am never quite sure of what I have gained from them. There are days when I feel I have been able to grasp all there is know in one single gaze, as if invisible branches suddenly spring out of no where, weaving together all the disparate strands of my reading. And then suddenly the meaning escapes, the essence evaporates and no matter how often I reread the same lines they seem to flee ever further with each subsequent reading and I see myself as some mad old fool who thinks her stomach is full because she's been reading the menu.”

 “They didn't recognize me," I repeat.
He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm.
"It is because they have never seen you," he says. "I would recognize you anywhere.”

 “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.”

 “I may know that the world is an ugly place, I still don't want to see it.”

 “People think that children don't know anything. It's enough to make you wonder if grownups were ever children once upon a time.”

 “I know that they're all unhappy because nobody loves the right person the way they should and because they don't understand that it's really their own self that they're mad at.”

 “...This is the first time I have met someone who seeks out people and who sees beyond...We never look beyond our assumptions and, what's worse, 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. If we actually realized this, if we were to become aware of the fact that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy...As for me, I implore fate to give me the chance to see beyond myself and truly meet someone.”

  “If, in our world, there is any chance of becoming the person you haven't yet become...will I know how to seize that chance, turn my life into a garden that will be completely different from my forebears'?”

  “I'm afraid to go into myself and see what's going on in there.”