" Albertine’s taste for these pretty things was much sharper than the Duchesse’s, because, like any obstacle placed in the way of possession (like my illness, which made travel so difficult and so desirable for me), poverty, more generous in this than riches, gives women something more than the clothes they cannot buy: the desire for these clothes, which is the true way, detailed, thorough, of getting to know them. She, because she could not afford to buy these things herself, and I, because by having them made for her I was trying to please her, were like students who know every detail of the pictures they long to go and see in Dresden or Vienna. Meanwhile rich women, surrounded by their countless hats and dresses, are like people who, having had no desire to visit a museum, find there only sensations of dizziness, fatigue and boredom. "

― Marcel Proust , La Prisonnière