The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.

As victims of hurt, we frequently don't bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

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

One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.