"That adolescent me, the girl who was, as I remember her, insecure, unsure, dreaming, yearning, longing, that girl who was hard on herself, who was cowardly and brave, who was confused and determined-that girl who was me-still exists. I call on her when I write. I am the me of today-the person who has become a woman, a mother, a writer. Yet I am the me of all those other days as well. I believe in the reality of that past."
Source : James Howell (1713). “Epistolae Ho-Elianae: Familiar Letters, Domestick and Foreign. Divided into four books, Partly Historical, Political, Philosophical. Upon Emergent Occasions”, p.206