Nabokov's Speak, Memory:

"This schismatic mood revealed itself in her healthy distaste for the ritual of the Greek Catholic Church and for its priests. She found a deep appeal in the moral and poetical side of the Gospels, but felt no need to support any dogma. The appalling insecurity of an afterlife and its lack of privacy did not enter her thoughts. Her intense and pure religiousness took the form of her having equal faith in the existence of another world and in the impossibility of comprehending it in terms of earthly life."

Paul Ingrassia, Engines of Change:

"Driving a BMW was like wearing a form-fitting, trim-cut Italian designer suit instead of sturdy but boxy threads from Brooks Brothers. Mercedes gave top priority to big cars, which made its smaller cars feel like cheap versions of the real thing. But BMW's roots lay in small cars. Its bigger models, the 5 series and 7 series, evolved from its small cars, which remained at the core of the company. "Eine Wurst, drei Grosse," the company's engineers would say, meaning, 'one sausage, three sizes.' That wouldn't become an advertising slogan, mercifully, but the point was clear."

Max Ophul's Le Plaisir (1952) based on three lovely stories by Maupassant.

All is Lost is an arresting and beautiful film.

Joseph Epstein on Proust's original English translator, CK Scott Moncrieff