In a world thronged with monsters and gods, we know little peace of mind. There is hardly a single action we perform in [adolescence] which we would not give anything, in later life, to be able to annul. Whereas what we ought to regret is that we no longer possess the spontaneity which made us perform them. In later life we look at things in a more practical way, in full conformity with the rest of society, but adolescence is the only period in which we learn anything.
—Marcel Proust, Within A Budding Grove
