I shall never forget what I have never revealed to anyone, the phenomenon which accompanied the birth of my consciousness of self and of which I can specify both the place and the time. One morning, as a very young child, I was standing in our front door and was looking over to the wood pile on the left, when suddenly the inner vision "I am a me" shot down before me like a flash of lighting from the sky, and ever since it has remained with me luminously: at that moment my ego had seen itself for the first time, and for ever. One can hardly conceive of deceptions of memory in this case, since no one else's reporting could mix additions with such an occurrence, which happened merely in the curtained holy of holies of man and whose novelty alone had lent permanence to such everyday concomitants.

Jean-Paul Richter

And then an event did occur, to Emily, of considerable importance. She suddenly realized who she was.

There is little reason that one can see why it should not have happened to her five years earlier, or even five later; and one, why it should have come that particular afternoon.

She had been playing house in a nook right in the bows, behind the windlass . . . and tiring of it was walking rather aimlessly aft, thinking vaguely about some bees and a fairy queen, when it suddenly flashed into her mind that she was she.

She stopped dead, and began looking over all of her person which came within the range of her eyes. She could not see much, except a foreshortened view of the front of her frock, and her hands when she lifted them for inspection; but it was enough for her to form a rough idea of the little body she suddenly realized to be hers.

She began to laugh, rather mockingly. "Well," she thought, in effect: "Fancy you, of all people, going and getting caught like this! You can't get out of it now, not for a very long time: you'll have to go through with being a child, and growing up, and getting old, before you'll be quit of this mad prank!"

Determined to avoid any interruption of this highly important occasion, she began to climb the ratlines on her way to her favorite perch at the masthead. Each time she moved an arm or a leg in this simple action, however, it struck her with fresh amazement to find them obeying so readily. Memory told her, of course, that they had always done so before: but before, she had never realized how surprising this was.

Once settled on her perch, she began examining the skin of her hands with the utmost care: for it was hers. She slipped a shoulder out of the top of her frock; and having peeped in to make sure she really was continuous under her clothes, she shrugged it up to touch her cheek. The contact of her face and the warm bare hollow of her shoulder gave her a comfortable thrill, as if it was the caress of some friend. But whether the feeling came to her through her cheek or her shoulder, which was the caresser and which the caressed, that no analysis could tell her.

Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica

All of them, all except Phinneas, constructed at infinite costs to themselves, these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way, if he ever attacked at all, if indeed he was the enemy.

John Knowles, A Separate Peace