55 Quotes About Proust

He wanted to know all about me and my family and especially my childhood."That's where everything starts," he'd say. "Both heaven and hell.

He wanted to know all about me and my family and especially my childhood.'That's where everything starts', he'd say. 'Both heaven and hell.

He wanted to know all about me and my family and especially my childhood.That's where everything starts, he'd say. Both heaven and hell.

Ogni mediazione proietta un suo miraggio; i miraggi si susseguono come altrettante "verità" che subentrino alle verità anteriori come una vera e propria uccisione del ricordo vivente e si proteggano dalle verità future con una censura implacabile dell'esperienza quotidiana. Marcel Proust chiama "Io" i "mondi" proiettati dalle successive mediazioni. Gli Io sono perfettamente isolati gli uni dagli altri, incapaci di rammentarsi degli Io passati o di presagire gli Io futuri.

The past, to repeat the words of Proust, is hidden in some material object. To wander about in the world, then, is also to wander about in ourselves.

I feel like a blind man searching a dark room for a pair of black socks that aren’t there.

I feel like a blind man searching a dark room.(Old Man Alone on Labor Day Weekend -- blog post)

Western civilisation, the élitists all understood, is built upon discrimination: a culture that does not rest on discrimination, that penalises people who discriminate, or rewards the undiscriminating, is worth very little and has only callow, childish pleasures.

Yet the Narrator’s quest is not only for his own identity and vocation. He seeks an understanding of art, sexuality and worldly and political affairs: he is a snoop and a voyeur; he comments and classifies; his taxonomic impulse makes the novel appear to be a vast compendium, replete with burrowing wasps and bedsteads, military strategies, stereoscopes, asparagus and aeroplanes.