When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.

It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.

What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.