what she loved: life, London, this moment of june.

How far do our feelings take their colour from the dive underground? I mean, what is the reality of any feeling?

So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball

Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.

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.

fishing teaches a stern morality; inculcates a remorseless honesty.

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.