““I had no time to make a world of my own. I had to stay fixed, like Atlas, my feet on the elephant's back, and the elephant on the tortoise's back. To inquire on what the tortoise stood would be to go mad. I didn't dare to think of anything then except the facts. To get beneath the facts, I would have to be an artist, and one doesn't become an artist overnight. First, you have to be crushed. To have your conflicting points of view annihilated, you have to be wiped out as a human being in order to be born again an individual. You have to be carbonized and mineralized in order to work upwards from the last common denominator of the self.””
