“And when I read, and really I do not read so much, only a few authors—a few men that I discovered by accident—I do this because they look at things in a broader, milder and more affectionate way than I do, and because they know life better, so that I can learn from them.”

“Some readers may suppose that such things as these evocations are trifles not worth stopping at; but literature consists of such trifles. Literature consists, in fact, not of general ideas but of particular revelations, not of schools of thought but of individuals of genius. Literature is not about something: it is the thing itself, the quiddity. Without the masterpiece, literature does not exist.”