The writer “can describe a scene by describing one after another the innumerable objects which at a given moment were present at a particular place, but truth will be obtained by him only when he takes two different objects, states the connection between them. . . . Truth — and life too — can be attained by us only when, by comparing a quality common to two sensations, we succeed in extracting their common essence and in reuniting them to each other within a metaphor, liberated from the contingencies of time.”

— Proust, Time Regained