Author: Elif Batuman

Cites

• Marcel Proust (1)
  • IN: The Idiot (2017) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: But the characteristic feature of the ridiculous age I was going through - awkward indeed but by no means infertile - is that we do not consult our intelligence and that the most trivial attributes of other people seme to us to form an inseparable part of their personality. In a world thronged with monsters and with gods, we know little peace of mind. There is hardly a single action we perform in that phase which we would not give anything, in later life, to be able to annul. Whereas what we ought to regret is that we no long possess the spontaneity which made us perform them. In later life we look at things in a more practical way, in full conformity with the rest of society, but adolescence is the only period in which we learn anything.
    FROM: In Search of Lost Time, Vol II: Within a Budding Grove, (1913), Novel, France