““The picaresque path can probably also be a metaphor for the passage of the soul back to its creator. The thieves along the way -- the thieves of money, of love, of magic, of time -- are merely human obstacles to keep the traveller from perceiving that she herself is the path. The path is as steep and as precipitous as we make it, as level and rolling as we can grade it, as steady as we are steady, as passable or impassable as our own will to pass. In a true picaresque, the hero stops struggling and becomes the path. At fifty, we need this knowledge most of all.””
