I have every useless thing in the world in my house there. The only thing wanting is the necessary thing, a great patch of open sky like this. Always… - Marcel Proust

...my house contains every useless thing in the world. it lacks only the one essential, a piece of sky like this one...

The so-called sensitivity of neurotics develops along with their egotism; they cannot bear for other people to flaunt the sufferings with which they are increasingly preoccupied themselves.

Their arrogance protected them against any liking for their fellow-man, against the slightest interest in the strangers sitting all about them, amidst whom M. de Stermaria adopted the manner one has in the buffet-car of a train, grim, hurried, stand-offish, brusque, fastidious and spiteful, surrounded by other passengers whom one has never seen before, whom one will never see again and towards whom the only conceivable way of behaving is to make sure that they keep away from one's cold chicken and stay out of one's chosen corner-seat.

To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare to fail... failure is his world and the shrink from it desertion