Time Regained (In Search of Lost Time #7)

by Marcel Proust

I know all too well how easily these images left by the mind are effaced by the mind. For the old ones they substitute new ones which do not have the same power of resurrection. And if I still had the François le Champi which Mama took one evening out of the parcel of books my grandmother must have given me for my birthday, I would never look at it: I would be too frightened of gradually inserting into it my current impressions until they had completely covered up the old ones, I would be too frightened of seeing it become at this point a thing of the present which, when I asked it to raise up once again the child who spelled out its title in the little bedroom at Combray, the child, not recognizing its accent, would no longer respond to its call, and would remain for ever buried in oblivion.