Proust said that the novel is a mirror held up to life, and that the art is to be judged by the quality of the mirror, not of the life.
The cracked looking-glass of a servant, I suppose, is no good to anyone but me who is holding it. I've no time for a soliloquy. I've written for pages and pages and pages about what's important to me and no one else because there's truth in that. I can trust what I know, what I think I know and nothing else.
I'll tell you a sore truth, little understood It's harder to leave, than to be left: To stay, to leave, both sting wrong.
You will always have me to blame, Can dream we might have sailed on; From absence's rib, a warm fiction.
To tear up old love by the roots, To trample on past affections: There is no music for so harsh a song.