If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a three-dimensional, or, rather, no model: every experience is unrepeatable. What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.

You only have to start saying of something : 'Ah, how beautiful ! We must photograph it !' and you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it never existed, and therefore in order to really live you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every moment of your life.

His memory, if he could patiently reconstruct the hours he passed, second by second, promised him boundless Edens.

His memory, if he could patiently reconstruct the hours he had passed, second by second, promised him boundless Edens.

...in everything that was most remote from her lay the value of having her, the sense of his being the one who had her.

Of course, if I chose to be an optimist, there was always the possibility that, if our two parallels continued to infinity, the moment would come when they would touch.

If unhappy is the sweetheart who invokes kisses of which he does not know the flavour, a thousand times more unhappy is who this flavour tasted once and then was denied

I've been in love for five hundred million years…

If the spark doesn't come, that's a pity; but we do not read the classics out of duty or respect, but only out of love.