"Instead, now perhaps we can look at a beautiful woman and know she will be beautiful to the end of her life. She will be different, of course. And yet, like a fine Proustian sentence, she will have gathered time and harvested memory, lived through a million bodily shocks and metal joys and arrived at the perfect embodiment of herself right now. The girl she once was in the summer dress had always known this could happen"
Andrew O'Hagan