We all come to the novelist as slaves stand before an emperor. He can free us with a word. Through him we can abandon our former lot and know what it is to be a general, a weaver, a singer, a country gentleman, to live in the village, to gamble, to hunt, to hate, to love, to go soldiering. Through him we are Napoleon, Savonarola, a peasant—stranger yet, an existence we might never have experienced, we are ourselves. He lends a voice to the mob, to solitude, to the old churchman, to the sculptor, to the child, to the horse, to the soul within us. Through him, we become the true Proteus who puts on all forms of life in succession. Exchanging them this, one for another, we feel that to our being, grown so agile and so strong, these forms of life are only a game, a mask that grieves or grins, but which is never quite real. Our good or bad fortune momentarily loses its tyrannical hold on us, we play with it and with that of others. This is why we feel such happiness when we reach the end of some beautiful novel with a tragic theme.

— Marcel Proust (On Art and Literature) (via readbooks) (via libraryland)

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

— Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (via justbesplendid) (via quote-book)