But many intelligent people have a sort of bug: they think intelligence is an end in itself. They have one idea in mind: to be intelligent, which is really stupid. And when intelligence takes itself for its own goal, it operates very strangely: the proof that it exists is not to be found in the ingenuity or simplicity of what it produces, but in how obscurely it is expressed.

Levin delights in the forgetfulness that movement brings, where the pleasure of doing is marvellously foreign to the striving of the will.

With the exception of love, friendship and the beauty of Art, I don't see much else that can nurture human life.

Some people are incapable of perceiving in the object of their contemplation the very thing that gives it its intrinsic life and breath, and they spend their entire lives conversing about mankind as if they were robots, and about things as though they have no soul and must be reduced to what can be said about them - all at the whim of their own subjective inspiration.

To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity. Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things.

They didn't recognize me," I repeat. He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm. "It is because they have never seen you," he says. "I would recognize you anywhere.

In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.