There is something sublime in wasting a life which might have mad utility, in never completing a work which would necessarily have been sublime, by abandoning halfway the assured path to success!

[…] And I who talk like this – why do I write such a book? Because I know it to be imperfect. Total silence would be perfection; once written, it unperfections itself; for that reason, I write it.

And above all, because I defend what is useless, absurd – I write this book to lie to myself, to betray my own theory.

Soares