when I awoke like this, and my mind struggled in an unsuccessful attempt to discover where I was, everything revolved around me through the darkness: things, places, years

the strongest desire I had in the world, namely, to keep my mother in the room through the sad hours of darkness

in Dostoievsky this preoccupation with murder is something extraordinary which makes him very alien to me

Later on, faced with the self-evident lie, or seized by an anxious doubt, I would endeavor to recall it; but in vain; my memory had not been warned in time; it had thought it unnecessary to keep a copy.

existence is of little interest save on days when the dust of realities is mingled with magic sand, when some trivial incident becomes a springboard for romance

25-30 is such a weird age group. You have to dwell on your youthful experiences of eating madeleines and begin to synthesise them into a seven-volume novel about lost time

that is why they fall in love with a soldier or a fireman, whose uniform makes them less particular about his face; they kiss and believe that beneath the crushing breastplate there beats a heart different from the rest, more gallant, more adventurous, more tender

again the dazzling and indistinct vision fluttered near me, as if to say: "Seize me as I pass if you can, and try to solve the riddle of happiness which I set you."

the utter impossibility of finding pleasure when one spends all one's time seeking it

Even when he was not thinking of the little phrase, it existed latent in his mind on the same footing as certain other notions without material equivalent, such as our notions of light, of sound, of perspective, of physical pleasure

The name Swann had for me become almost mythological, and when I talked with my family I would grow sick with longing to hear them utter it; I dared not pronounce it myself, but I would draw them into the discussion of matters which led naturally to Gilberte and her family

tortured by the certainty of the present and the uncertainty of the future, I pictured Albertine starting on a life which she had deliberately chosen to lead apart from me, perhaps for a long time, perhaps for ever

The self that had loved her, which another self had already almost entirely supplanted, would reappear, stimulated far more often by a trivial than by an important event.

the music of Vinteuil extended, note by note, stroke by stroke, the unknown, incalculable colourings of an unsuspected world

I had only just, on feeling her for the first time alive, real, making my heart swell to the breaking-point, on finding her at last, learned that I had lost her for ever.

In the people whom we love, there is, immanent, a certain dream which we cannot always clearly discern but which we pursue.

Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it.

the truth is that every morning war is declared afresh. And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as the men who began it, more guilty perhaps

Since railways came into existence, the necessity of not missing trains has taught us to take account of minutes

For a long time I would go to bed early.