Time Regained (In Search of Lost Time #7)

by Marcel Proust

This was an impression from long ago, in which my memories of childhood and family were affectionately mingled and which I had not immediately recognized. For a moment I had angrily wondered who the stranger was who had just upset me. But the stranger was myself, it was the child I was then, whom the book had just brought back to life within me because, knowing nothing of me except this child, it was this child that the book had immediately summoned, wanting to be looked at only by his eyes, loved only by his heart, and wanting to speak only to him. So this book which my mother had read aloud to me in Combray until it was almost morning had retained for me all the wonder of that night.