Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only… — Marcel Proust

Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.

In Search of Lost Time · 1922
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Current citation
Proust, Marcel. The Fugitive, edited and translated by Peter Collier. Penguin Classics, 2021.
Original citation
Proust, Marcel. Albertine disparue [Albertine Gone]. Paris: Gallimard, 1927.