The Infinite

"When Madame Yvonne went to bed that night, she began thinking about light-years. She tried to visualize them, and she thought about all those stars receding into the distance, with /nothing much in between for a foothold, and about how there even more even farther away, with poor little rays of light getting all out of breath making the trip (who knows why) and how those rays, despite their great speed, didn't seem to be making much better time than a Mercedes in rush hour traffic on the highway. Madame Yvonne couldn't sleep. All those distances and unfathomably far away stars had given her a headache, and she shook Monsieur Yvonne, who had been snoring peacefully at her side: 'Arsene,' she said to him, 'the thought of those infinite spaces frightens me'" (Jacques Roubaud, Our Beautiful Heroine, 168).