Wings, another respiratory system which allowed us to cross the immensity of space, would not help us. For if we went to Mars or Venus while keeping the same senses, everything we might see there would take on the same aspect as the things we know on Earth. The only real journey, the only Fountain of Youth, would be to travel not towards new landscapes, but with new eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them can see, or can be; and we can do that with the help of an Elstir, a Vinteuil; with them and their like we can truly fly from star to star.
Proust, Marcel. The Prisoner. Trans. Carol Clark. Ed. Christopher Prendergast. London: Allen Lane, 2002. Vol. 5 of In Search of Lost Time. 6 vols. 1913-27.
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