“He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. He did not know where to seek it or how, but a premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him. They would meet quietly as if they had known each other and had made their tryst, perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place. They would be alone surrounded by darkness and silence: and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured.”
—Stephen Dedalus, from James Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Signet Classics, 1991)
