Finding Time Again: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 7 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

by Marcel Proust

Certainly I intended to resume living in solitude from the next day onward, but this time with a specific purpose. Even at home I would not let people come to see me during my working moments, for the duty to write my book took precedence over that of being polite or even good-natured. They would probably insist, those who had not seen me for such a long time, coming to see me in the belief that I was cured, coming when the labor of their day or of their life was finished or interrupted, and having then the same need of me as I had once had of Saint-Loup; and because, as I had already noticed at Combray when my parents reprimanded me at the moment when, unknown to them, I had made the most praiseworthy resolutions, the internal clocks which are allocated to human beings are not all set to the same time. One strikes the hour of repose at the same time as another is striking that of work, one that of punishment by the judge when within the culprit the hour of repentance and self-improvement has long since struck. But I would have the courage to reply to those who came to see me, or who sent for me, that, because of essential matters which I needed to get abreast of immediately, I had an urgent, a crucially important meeting with myself.