Reading. de Saint-Exupéry.

When I was a child, I would finish my own books and wander over to my father's study and rummage through his books. In this way many of my parents' books migrated over to my room, disappearing under the bed, behind other books on their shelves, under the desk or in various drawers. Some were eventually returned (or rather, a rescue operation would be launched to retrieve them from the dark depths of chaos that is my bedroom), others have stayed over the years.

One book that has followed me for some twenty years now (perhaps not quite that long) is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince). The cover has faded, the pages yellowing. It must be older than I am. I cannot remember when I first read it, or even if I understood it. Perhaps I do not understand it even now. A plane-wrecked explorer falls into the desert, and there, he meets a little prince, who himself has come from his distant home, a far-off star...

Whilst in the desert the explorer hears the little prince's stories about his planet, his precious rose, all the planets he visited and the people he met on his way to earth. What is unusual and beautiful about this book is how it explores that most mysterious of all relationships, that between adults and children, who interact in a way that is completely different from the way grown-ups are with other grown-ups, or children with children. There is a different language, a different vocabulary. I read it first as a child, learning how to navigate that world of grownups who bent their heads to talk to me, overjoyed to fall into the words of writer who seemed to understand that children see everything more clearly than adults think they do. And now I am a grownup who leans down to kiss the head of my best friend's nine-year-old sister (perhaps I was her age when I first discovered The Little Prince) as she throws her arms around my waist in greeting or farewell...

There is a handful of books that I first read when I was quite small and which I return to again and again. As the years pass there are some things which stay with me. What I remember most about The Little Prince is the conversations between the little prince and the snake who promises to send him home to his far-off planet, and the lesson the fox gives the little prince, the present of a secret...

Here is the secret that the fox tells the little prince, the secret which I have carried with me for all this time, and which I will remember forever, even if I forget everything else...

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur; le essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

(Here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye).