“At one in the morning, after hours of sobbing and anguish such as no other separation ever caused me, I wrote a letter. I have it now: I have just re-read it and am holding it in my hand, quite without emotion; its paper gives no hint that it is different from any other piece of paper, and the letters are like any other letters in any other sentences. Between my self of that night and my self of tonight there is the difference between the cadaver and the surgeon doing the autopsy.”

(Gustave Flaubert, travel notes, p. 21 in Flaubert in Egypt, trans. & ed. Francis Steegmuller.)