What does it mean to know and experience my own nothingness? It is not enough to turn away in disgust from my illusions and faults and mistakes, to separate myself from them as if they were not, and as if I were someone other than myself. This kind of self-annihilati on is only a worse illusion, it is a pretended humility which, by saying I am nothing I mean in effect I wish I were not what I am.

Thoughts In Solitude (ed. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011) - ISBN: 9781429944076