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 pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.

Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.

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.

Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.

Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.