In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7]

by Marcel Proust

Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit;

I would fall asleep, and often I would be awake again for short snatches only, just long enough to hear the regular creaking of the wainscot, or to open my eyes to settle the shifting kaleidoscope of the darkness, to savour, in an instantaneous flash of perception, the sleep which lay heavy upon the furniture, the room, the whole surroundings of which I formed but an insignificant part and whose unconsciousness I should very soon return to share.

When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host.

Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by the immobility of our conceptions of them.