My mania for creating a false world is still with me and will leave me only when I die. I no longer line up in my desk drawers cotton reels and pawns — with the occasional bishop and knight thrown in — but I regret not doing so … and instead, like someone in winter, cozily warming himself by the fire, I line up in my imagination the ranks of constant, living characters who inhabit my inner world. For I have a whole world of friends inside me, each with his or her own real, definite, imperfect life.
