Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff. - Clive James

The sure sign of a weak man who ascends to glory is that he can't tolerate having strong men around him.

Since the Nazi era need never have happened, to say that he prophesised it is actually a belittlement of his creative achievement, and only one step up from saying that he caused the whole thing. But nobody could now read The Trial without thinking of the Soviet show trials, or the short works Metamorphosis and In the Penal Colony without thinking of the death camps.

Herzen was closer to the truth when he said that every memory calls up a dozen others. The real miracle of Proust is the discipline with which he stemmed the flow. Everything is a Madeleine.