I began to have ambitions again. Despite my friendships and my uncertain love-affair, I still felt very much alone; there was no one who knew me or loved me completely, for myself alone; no one was, nor, I thought could anyone ever be ‘someone definite and complete’ to me. Rather than go on suffering because of this, I again took refuge in pride. My isolation was a sign of my superiority; I no longer had any doubts about that: I was somebody, and I would do great things. I thought up themes for novels. One morning in the library at the Sorbonne, instead of doing Greek translation, I began ‘my book’. I had to study for the exams in June; I hadn’t enough time; but I calculated that next year I would have more free time and I made a promise to myself that I would then without more ado write my very own book ‘It is to be a work,’ I told myself in my diary, ‘which will tell all.’ I often insisted in my journal on this necessity to ‘tell all’, which makes a curious contrast with the paucity of my experience. Philosophy had increased my tendency to seize the essence, the root, the totality of things; and as I was living in a world of abstractions I believed that I had discovered, once and for all, the truth of life. From time to time I would suspect that there was more to it than I had so far discovered: but only very occasionally. My superiority over other people came precisely from the fact that I didn’t let anything get past me: the peculiar value of my work would be the result of this exceptional privilege.