one might almost say that works of literature are like artesian wells, the deeper the suffering, the higher they rise.) - Marcel Proust

It is our noticing them that puts things in a room, our growing used to them that takes them away again and clears a space for us.

…the warm glazes, the sparkling penumbra of the room itself and, through the little window framed with honeysuckle, in the rustic avenue, the resilient dryness of the sun-parched earth, veiled only by the diaphanous gauze woven of distance and the shade of the trees.

It was not evil that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil.