...I have lived an agonizing life, and I would like to describe that agony to you, but I am obsessed by the fear that there will not be time enough, for as far back as I can remember, I remember myself with lawless lucidity; I have been my own accomplice, who knows too much, and therefore is dangerous, so much so that I issue from such burning blackness, I spin like a top, with such propelling force, such tongues of flame, that to this day I occasionally feel that primordial palpitation of mine, that first branding contact, the mainspring of my "I"...