Darwin8u’s Reviews > The Guermantes Way > Status Update

The ideas that had been passing through my mind were dispelled. They are goddesses who sometimes deign to make themselves visible to a solitary mortal, at a crossroads, or even a bedroom while he sleeps, and they stand in the doorway to bring him their annunciation. But as soon as he is no longer alone, they vanish in a refusal to appear to more than one person at a time.

Pain is largely a kind of need felt by the organism to acquaint itself with an unfamiliar state that is troubling it, to adjust its responses to that state.

"It is illness that makes us recognize that we do not live in isolation but are chained to a being from a different realm, worlds apart from us, with no knowledge of us, and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body."

"I was merely the instrument of habits of not working, of not going to bed, of not sleeping, which had to fulfill themselves at any cost" (143).

"I reminded myself that the worst hardships have their place of sanctuary, that when all else fails rest can be found" (pg 85).