Because there's no store that sells friends.

📖 The Little Prince_Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (translated by Park Seong-chang)

For the first time, I properly read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince.

I was captivated and pulled out the old, worn-cover book that I remember my parents buying for me in elementary school. The content was only vaguely remembered through images like the boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant and the sheep in a box. It wasn’t until I turned thirty that I finally understood why it’s such a globally renowned masterpiece.

As I’m forcibly transitioning from a child to an adult, I constantly ponder how to think and act to become an adult I wouldn’t be ashamed of. The episodes and passages in The Little Prince helped guide me a little more clearly in that direction. And numbers really aren’t important!

📝 Thoughts and Sentences I Loved

“You’re talking just like grown-ups!”

I felt a little ashamed at these words. He continued relentlessly.

“You’re confusing everything… You’re confusing everything!”

He was truly angry. His golden hair fluttered in the wind.

“On a certain star I know, there lived a gentleman with a crimson face. He had never smelled a flower. He had never looked at a star. He had never loved anyone. All he did was calculate. So all day long, just like you, he would mutter, ‘I’m a serious person! I’m an important person!’ And he was full of pride. But he’s not a person. He’s a mushroom!”

“What did you say?”

“A mushroom, I tell you!”

As he said this, the Little Prince was so angry that his face turned pale.

**

“Are you really admiring me?” he asked the Little Prince.

“What does ‘admire’ mean?”

“Well, it means acknowledging that I am the most handsome, the best dressed, the richest, and the smartest person on this star.”

“But you’re the only one on this star!”

“Anyway, just make me happy. Please admire me.”

The Little Prince shrugged his shoulders slightly and said,

“Alright, I’ll admire you. But what does that matter to you?”

And the Little Prince left that star.

“Grown-ups are really strange…” thought the Little Prince, and he continued his journey.

**

“People? Well. There seem to be about six or seven of them. I saw them a few years ago. But I don’t know where to find them. They are blown about by the wind. They have no roots. So they probably have a lot of trouble.”

**

“You can’t truly know something without taming it. People no longer have time to truly know anything. They just buy ready-made things from stores. But since there are no stores that sell friends, they now have no friends. If you want a friend, tame me!”

**

The Little Prince said,

“People board express trains, but they don’t really know what they’re looking for. They rush around restlessly, but in the end, they just circle in place…”

**

1939

In an interview, he emphasized the connection between his experience as a pilot and his writing as an author, stating, “For me, flying and writing are entirely one. What is important is to act and to illuminate the coordinates within oneself. The pilot and the writer are merged in the same awareness.” He then published Wind, Sand and Stars, which caused a huge sensation.

**

Your now-famous words, “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction,” aren’t they an expression of the will that each individual must be conscious of their responsibility towards others, and that such inevitable bonds strengthen human connection? We can never share love without accompanying it with responsible actions.