How Proust Can Change Your Life (Vintage International)

by Alain de Botton

Clichés are detrimental insofar as they inspire us to believe that they adequately describe a situation while merely grazing its surface. And if this matters, it is because the way we speak is ultimately linked to the way we feel, because how we describe the world must at some level reflect how we first experience it.

Alas, Madame Straus, there are no certainties, even grammatical ones.… [O]nly that which bears the imprint of our choice, our taste, our uncertainty, our desire and our weakness can be beautiful.”