“In reality every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“real books should be the offspring not of daylight and casual talk but of darkness and silence” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it; it does not constitute it.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“True life life at last discovered and illuminated the only life therefore really lived that life is literature.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
In reality, every reader is, while reading, the reader of his own self. — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“Dinner-parties bore us because our imagination is absent, and reading interests us because it is keeping us company.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“This book of mine has not been manufactured: it has been garnered.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“The impression is for the writer what experiment is for the scientist, with the difference that in the scientist the work of… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
...a writer's works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“A new book was not one of a number of similar objects, but was like an individual man, unmatched, and with no… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
I perceived that to express those impressions, to write that essential book, which is the only true one, a great writer does… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“His life and family circle changed considerably between 1900 and 1905. In February 1903, Proust's brother Robert married and left the family… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“In reality every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer's work is merely a kind… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
In times like ours, where the growing complexity of life leaves us barely the time to read the newspapers, where the map… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
Perhaps the pleasure one feels in writing is not the infallible test of the literary value of a page; perhaps it is… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“As long as reading is for us the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling-places deep within us… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
That abominable and sensual act called reading the newspaper, thanks to which all the misfortunes and cataclysms in the universe over the… — Marcel Proust Copy Share Image
“machinery' of life at Versailles; and was able, too, to persuade herself that her silence, a shade of good humour or of arrogance on… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“For her [Françoise], wealth was like a necessary condition without which virtue would lack both merit and charm. She made so little distinction between… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
Knowing does not always allow us to prevent, but at least the things that we know, we hold them, if not in our hands,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
...a writer's works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to which suffering… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“Then from those profound slumbers we awake in a dawn, not knowing who we are, being nobody, newly born, ready for anything, the brain… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“Art extracted from the most familiar reality does indeed exist and its domain is perhaps the largest of any.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share
I find very reasonable the Celtic belief that the souls of our dearly departed are trapped in some inferior being, in an animal, aplant,… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“When you heard anyone in the middle of a talk which was being deliberately kept off the Affair announce furtively some piece of political… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“We betroth ourselves by proxy, and then feel obliged to marry the intermediary.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“But the old lady on the contrary, far from justifying her daughter’s fears, felt every time someone of her own age “disappeared” that she… — Marcel Proust Copy Share
Often it is just lack of imagination that keeps a man from suffering very much. — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“When we are nice to others, we generally lose all claim to their respect.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share
“Nobility is often no more than the inner aspect which our egotistical feelings assume when we have not yet named and classified them.” — Marcel Proust Copy Share
