Neurotics, who cause less distress to themselves and their neighbours than those in the other category, are at war with their own natures. Their right hands are in conflict with their left. Psychotics, and it is those who commit purposeless crimes and prefer death to life, are at war with their environment. Right and left hands strike against the womb that carries them.

... A La Recherche du Temps Perdu is like a beautiful hand with long fingers reaching out to pluck a perfect fruit, without error,for the accurate eye knows well it is growing just there on the branch, while Ulysses is the fumbling of a horned hand in darkness after a doubted jewel.

The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you.

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.

It isn't only living people who die, it is great stretches of living, which can die even when the people who lived there still exist.

Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.

There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time.