"Behold, one of the moments whose series will go to make up their sum, a moment as genuine as the rest, if not actually more important to ourself because our mistress is more intensely a part of it; we picture it to ourselves, we possess it, we intervene upon it, almost we have created it: namely, the moment in which he goes to tell her that we are waiting there below." Swann's Way, Overture, p. 17

"I felt that I had with an impious and secret finger traced a first wrinkle upon her soul and made the first white hair shew upon her head." Swann's Way, Overture, p. 21

"At Combray a person whom one 'didn't know at all' was as incredible a being as any mythological deity....On first noticing them you have been impressed by the thought that there might be in Combray people whom you 'didn't know...