From Tropic of Capricorn:

"I reached out for something to attach myself to- and I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for- myself. I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live- if what others are doing is called living- but to express my self. I realized that I had never had the least interest in living, but only in this which I am doing now, which is parallel to life, of it at the same time, and beyond it.

What is true interests me scarcely at all, nor even what is real; only that interests me which I imagine to be, that which I had stifled every day in order to live...From childhood on I can see myself on the track of this spectre, enjoying nothing, desiring nothing but this power, this ability. Everything else is a lie- everything I ever did or say which does not bear upon this. And that is pretty much the greatest part of my life."