I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinancy to implore an inclem… - Marcel Proust

There are people whose faces assume an unaccustomed beauty and majesty the moment they cease to look out of their eyes.

Even from the simplest, the most realistic point of view, the countries which we long for occupy, at any given moment, a far larger place in our actual life than the country in which we happen to be.

A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it, followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower of sand were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall spread, took on an order, a rhythm, became liquid, loud, drumming, musical, innumerable, universal. It was the rain