Friendship is in the end no more than: " . . . a lie which seeks to make us believe that we are not irremediably alone."
Marcel ProustWhen we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we were and the souls of the dead from whom we sprang come and shower upon us their riches and their spells, asking to be allowed to contribute to the new emotions which we feel and in which, erasing their former image, we recast them in an original creation.
Marcel ProustEvery reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.
Marcel ProustNine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.
Marcel Proust