"Infirmity alone makes us take notice and learn, and enables us to analyze processes which we would otherwise know nothing about. A man who falls straight into bed every night, and ceases to live until the moment he wakes and rises, will surely never dream of making, not necessarily great discoveries, but even minor observations about sleep. He scarcely knows that he is asleep. A little insomnia is not without is value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness."—Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, Lydia Davis, trans.
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