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

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.

The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things