A small amber glass hourglass containing a pale curled swirl on a charcoal and amber background.

Original artwork, not a still

Remembrance of Things Past

Marcel Proust

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The sentence imagines time changing the relationship between a statement and reality. Words that began as false gradually come to describe what exists. Its unsettling suggestion is that truth and falsehood may not remain attached to the same claim as circumstances continue to change.

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