“I always end up talking about the center without the slightest guarantee that I know what I’m saying, and I slip into the trap of geometry, that method we Occidentals use to try to regulate our lives: axis, center, raison d'être, Omphalos, nostalgic Indo-European names. Even this existence I sometimes try to describe, this Paris where I move about like a dry leaf, would not be visible if behind it there did not beat an anxiety for an axis, a coming together with the center shaft. All these words, all these terms for the same disorder. Sometimes I am convinced that triangle is another name for stupidity, that eight times eight is madness or a dog. Holding La Maga, that materialized nebula, I begin to think that it makes just as much sense to model a doll out of crumbled bread as to write the novel I will never write or to give my life in the defense of ideas that could redeem whole peoples.”