Through+the+looking+glass

I remember the passage almost by heart. 'I have never known,' it begins, 'whether life lies in words or in images, in speech or sight. Does a story come to be in the words that I conjure out of my mind or does it live already, somewhere, enshrined in mud and clay---in an image, that is, in the crafted mimicry of life?' (Ghosh, 226)