The thing about Proust is his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity. He searches out these butterfly shades to the last grain. He is as tough as catgut and as evanescent as a butterfly's bloom.

Each had his own business to think of. Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.

But nothing is so strange when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the complete indifference of other people.

Theories then are dangerous things.

At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial-and any question about sex is that-one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.

When she read just now to James, 'and there were numbers of soldiers with kettledrums and trumpets,' and his eyes darkened, she thought, why should they grow up, and lose all that?

Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life.