affirm my existence

"But still, if tomorrow I throw a bomb or murder Barsut, suddenly I'm everything, the man who exists, the man for whom generations of criminologists have prepared punishments, jails, and theories. I, who am nothing, will start the whole terrible machinery of police, secretaries, reporters, lawyers, prosecutors, jailers, paddywagons, and nobody will see me as a loser; instead, I'll be the antisocial man, the enemy who must be kept apart from society. That's really weird! And yet, only crime can affirm my existence, just as evil is all that affirms the presence of man on earth."

~~ from The Seven Madmen and The Flamethrowers by Roberto Arlt