“To write, to be able to write, what does it mean It means spending long hours dreaming before a white page, scribbling unconsciously, letting your pen play round a blot of ink and nibble at a half-formed word, scratching it, making it bristle with darts and adorning it with antennae and paws until it loses all resemblance to a legible work and turns into a fantastic insect or a fluttering creature half butterfly, half fairy.”

—Collette, The Vagabond; translated by Enid McLeod, 1955.