In Search of Lost Time

“Habit, in combining sensations that are consecutive in time into a single whole, makes them coexist, welds them together, neutralizes them in relation to one another. When I went to bed...the sounds which reached my from the street no longer formed an uninterrupted and foreign uproar; melted into the silence of my room, they became part of its furniture, like the ticking of the clock or the crackling of the burning logs"

"The schoolyard...was divided into zones of influence, governed by the older boys...These playgrounds were a microcosm of the outside world, where social positions were already established, and where force or favouritism decided everything".

"...the iron gates which shut in the private gardens, the little grey houses with mansard roofs, the wrought-iron balconies overflowing with flowers, the children playing between the nursemaids in white aprons, all this suggested a life different from our own, a life of peaceful intimacy, and a coolness, a shade, a mystery..."

"The drawing-room, with its high ceiling and three tall windows, looked out over a courtyard full of plane-trees. In the centre, a moss-covered fountain trickled into a basin". 

"The Bois, with its lakes, its avenues, its courses, unfolds like a vast, sun-drenched stage. Carriages with glistening panels and liveried coachmen...rolled by in an endless stream. The women inside, beneath their parasols, turned their heads..."

"The great chandelier of the Opera blazed like the thousand eyes of a fabulous beast, indifferent to the human drama about to be enacted, its own drama being that of shedding light eternally upon a world of make-believe."