" Once she is dead, we would feel qualms about being other; we now admire only what she was, what we already were, but mixed in with something else, and what henceforth we shall be alone. It is in this sense (and not in that very vague, very false sense in which it is generally understood) that we can say that death is not without its use, that the dead person continues to exercise an influence on us. "

― Marcel Proust , Sodom and Gomorrah