Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past). It was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.
Read more about Marcel Proust: Biography, Early Writing, In Search of Lost Time, Bibliography
Famous quotes by marcel proust:
“I understood that all the material of a literary work was in my past life, I understood that I had acquired it in the midst of frivolous amusements, in idleness, in tenderness and in pain, stored up by me without my divining its destination or even its survival, as the seed has in reserve all the ingredients which will nourish the plant.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of variety ... is but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety....”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“He admired the terrible recreative power of his memory. It was only with the weakening of this generator whose fecundity diminishes with age that he could hope for his torture to be appeased. But it appeared that the power to make him suffer of one of Odette’s statements seemed exhausted, then one of these statements on which Swann’s spirit had until then not dwelled, an almost new word relayed the others and struck him with new vigor.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Perhaps it is nothingness which is real and our dream which is non-existent, but then we feel think that these musical phrases, and the notions related to the dream, are nothing too. We will die, but our hostages are the divine captives who will follow our chance. And death with them is somewhat less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps less probable.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“It is, after all, very interesting that sound can reflect like water, like a mirror. And notice that Vinteuil’s phrase only shows me that to which I did not pay attention at the time. Of my worries, of my loves at that time, it does not recall a thing, it has made the exchange.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)