Proust quote

      "How Happy he would be, I thought, a man who had the power to write such a book! What a task awaited him! To give some idea of this task one would have to borrow comparisons from the loftiest and most varied arts; for this writer-who, moreover, to indicate the mass, the solidarity of each one of his characters must find means to display that character's most opposite facets-would have to prepare his book with meticulous care, perpetually regrouping his forces like a general conducing an offensive, and he would have also to endure his book like a form of fatigue, to accept it like a discipline, build it up like a church, follow it like a medical regime, vanquish it like an obstacle, win it like a friendship, cosset it like a little child, create it like a new world without neglecting those mysteries whose explanation is to be found probably only in worlds other than our own and the presentiment of which is the thing that moves us most deeply in life and art."


From Le Temps Retrouve
Vintage edition Trans. Andreas Mayor pg.259