"As for the inner book of unknown symbols (symbols carved in relief they might have been, which my attention, as it explored my unconscious, groped for and stumbled against and followed the contours of, like a diver exploring the ocean-bed), if I tried to red them no one could help me with any rules, for to read them was an act of creation in which no one can do our work for us or even collaborate with us. How many for this reason turn aside from writing! What tasks do men not take upon themselves in order to evade this task! [...] But these are mere excuses, the truth being that he has not or no longer has genius, that is to say instinct. [...] At every moment the artist has to listen to his instinct, and it is this that makes art the most real of all things, the most austere school of life[.]"

Proust, Recherche, v. VI.