L'amour, c'est l'espace et le temps rendus sensibles au coeur. - Marcel Proust

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 try to keep a patch of sky above your life, little boy,” he added, turning to me. “You have a soul in you of rare quality, an artist’s nature; never let it starve for lack of what it needs.

Love is not vain because it is frustrated, but because it is fulfilled. The people we love turn to ashes when we posess them.

Compared with that of a great artist, the friendliness of a great nobleman, however charming it may be, seems like play-acting, like simulation. Saint-Loup sought to please; Elstir loved to give, to give himself. Everything he possessed, ideas, works, and the rest which he counted for far less, he would have given gladly to anyone who understood him. But, for lack of congenial company, he lived in an unsociable isolation which fashionable people call pose and ill-breeding, the authorities a recalcitrant spirit, his neighbours madness, his family selfishness and pride.