We are but shadows: we are, not endowed with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream,--till the heart be touched. That touch creates us--then we begin to be--thereby we are beings of reality and inheritors of eternity.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Joel Myerson (2002). “Selected Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne”, p.80, Ohio State University Press
