The Elegance of the Hedgehog

I am currently reading Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog (translated from the French by Alison Anderson). This evening, I was struck by this passage:

Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty. When you speak, or read, or write, you can tell if you've said or read or written a fine sentence. You can recognize a well-turned phrase or an elegant style. But when you are applying the rules of grammar skillfully, you ascend to another level of the beauty of language. When you use grammar you peel back the layers, to see how it is all put together, see it quite naked, in a way. And that's where it becomes wonderful, because you say to yourself, "Look how well-made this is, how well-constructed it is! How solid and ingenious, rich and subtle!" I get completely carried away just knowing there are words of all different natures, and that you have to know them in order to be able to infer their potential usage and compatibility. I find there is nothing more beautiful, for example, than the very basic components of language, nouns and verbs. When you've grasped this, you've grasped the core of any statement. It's magnificent, don't you think? Nouns, verbs . . . (p. 158)

 Barbery's novel is a stunning example of the well-turned phrase. I am not quite halfway through, and I am torn between wanting to devour it all at once and longing to linger over every word. My current method falls somewhere in between, dashing through and then returning to pages and paragraphs to savor the language. Ah, lovely!