" I say that ambition is absurd, and yet I remain in its thrall. It’s like being a slave all your life, then learning one day that you never had a master, and returning to work all the same. Can you imagine a force in the universe greater than this? Not in my universe.You know, even from earliest childhood it dominated me. I longed for achievements, to be influential-that, in particular. To sway people. This has been my religion: the belief that I deserve attention, that they are wrong not to listen, that those who dispute me are fools. Yet, no matter what I achieve, the world lives on, impertinent, indifferent-I know all this, but I can’t get it through my head.

It is why, I suppose, I agreed to talk to you. To this day, I’ll pursue any folly to make the rest of you shut up and listen to me, as you should have from the start!"

She coughs and reaches for a fresh cigarette. "Here is a fact: nothing in all civilization has been as productive as ludicrous ambition. Whatever its ills, nothing has created more. Cathedrals, sonatas, encyclopedias: love of God was not behind them, nor love of life. But the love of man to be worshipped by man. "

― Tom Rachman , The Imperfectionists