One cannot read a novel without ascribing to the heroine the traits of the one we love.
Kilmartin wrote a highly amusing and illuminating account of his experience as a Proust revisionist, which appeared in the first issue of Ben Sonnenberg's quarterly in the autumn of 1981. The essay opened with a kind of encouragement: 'There used to ...
There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions but lack the all-important images to help us identify them.
It is difficult when reading the description of certain fictional characters not at the same time to imagine the real-life acquaintances who they most closely, if often unexpectedly, resemble.
Proust is a hero of mine. I read 'A la recherche' in one go, and I'm a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.
Suffering isn't ennobling, recovery is.
It is selfish to concern oneself with tragedies.
There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.
To have a style is to be stuck.
Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.
Men are separated by so many petty things.
That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.
To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength.
M. Proust was more severe than M. de Caillavet on Anatole France: "He was selfish and supercilious. He had read so much that he had left his heart in other people's books, and all that remained was dryness. One day I asked him how he came to know so ...
I find it's impossible for me to read Proust.
Once a Catholic always a Catholic.
Forget the past - the future will give you plenty to worry about.
I was born, for instance, incapable of appreciating music.
What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name - and moving on.
By forgetting the past and by throwing myself into other interests, I forget to worry.
