And then a new light, less dazzling, no doubt, than the other illumination which had made me perceive that the work of art was the sole means of rediscovering Lost Time, shone suddenly within me. And I understood that all the materials for a work of literature were simply my past life; I understood that they had come to me, in frivolous pleasures, in indolence, in tenderness, in unhappiness, and that I had stored them up without divining the purpose for which they were destined or even their continued existence, any more than a seed does when it forms within itself a reserve of all the nutritious substances from which it will feed a plant.

-- Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past
Tr. Moncrieff/Kilmartin