The cruel law of art is that people die and we ourselves die after exhausting every form of suffering, so that over our heads may grow the grass not of oblivion, but of eternal life, the vigorous and luxuriant growth of a true work of art, and so that gaily and without a thought for those who are sleeping below them, future generations may come to enjoy their dejeuner sur l'herbe. But surely you live on in the imaginations of your readers. No doubt my books, like my fleshly being, will in the end one day die. But death is a thing we must resign ourselves to. We accept the thought that in ten years we ourselves, and in a hundred years our books will have ceased to exist.
Eternal duration is promised no more to men's works than to men.
When we are alive, we passionately long for there to be another life in which we shall be similar to what we are here below. But we do not pause to reflect that even without waiting for the afterlife, in mortal life, after a few years, we are unfaithful to what we once were, to what we wished to remain immortally. T he houselights went out, and then on, as Marcel Proust himself appeared in the room, amidst tumultuous applause, bravos and a profusion of excited toasts. Mr. Proust's ordinary pallor was accentuated by 72 years of deadness, but he was otherwise perfectly elegant. He graciously accepted the accolades of the crowd as my co-mediums and I congratulated each other on our success, but quickly retired to the bar for the first drink he'd had for a long time.