There is also the equal and opposite temptation to look at the world as though it were an extension of the imaginary. {...} Like everyone else, he craves a meaning. Like everyone else his life is so fragmented that each time he sees a connection between two fragments he is tempted to look for a meaning in that connection. The connection exists. But to give it a meaning, to look beyond the bare fact of its existence, would be to build an imaginary world inside the real world, and he knows it would not stand. At his bravest moments, he embraces meaninglessness as the first principle, and then he understands that his obligation is to see what is in front of him {even though it is also inside him} and to say what he sees...
( Paul Auster )
[ The Invention of Solitude ]
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