In a sense, everything Proust wrote was a rehearsal for the Search, but the important point—made clear by his many anguished doubts about whether or not he was a novelist—is that until he found the story line, he did not know whether he would ever write such a book…. The demoralizing days of being at a loss over what to write ended when he realized that the story of his own life could be transfigured into a work of fiction.
–William C. Carter, Marcel Proust: A Life, 472
