Andre Gide, 'Isabelle', 1911

I can hardly understand nowadays the impatience with which I then flung myself upon life. At twenty-five years of age I knew almost nothing of it except from books; and that no doubt is why I thought myself a novelist; for I had not as yet realised how cunningly and maliciously events conceal from us just that part of themselves most likely to interest us, and how slight a handle they offer the man who is incapable of wresting their secret from them by force.