In reality, every reader when he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers … - Marcel Proust

In reality, every reader is, while reading, the reader of his own self.

The belief that a person has a share in an unknown life to which his or her love may win us admission is, of all the prerequisites of love, the one which it values most highly and which makes it set little store by all the rest.

Every person whom we love, indeed to a certain extent every person is to us like Janus, presenting to us the face that we like if that person leaves us, the repellent face if we know him or her to be perpetually at our disposal.

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.