Thinker ! This ridiculous name – Yet it’s possible to find a man, neither philosopher nor poet, who can’t be defined by the object of his thought, nor by the quest for an external result, a book, a doctrine, a field of science, a truth… but who is a thinker in the way one is a dancer, making use of his mind as the latter uses his muscles and his nerves; someone who, perceiving his mental images and his expectations, his types of language and his possibilities, what he’s attentive to, his freedom of movement, his vagueness and precision, – perceives, predicts, specifies or abandons, gives himself free rein or denies it – circumscribing, outlining, possessing and losing himself… an artist not so much of knowledge as of his own self – which he prefers to all knowledge; for the latter is only ever the specific act which he himself can, in fact, always refine and make more true, more elegant, more astonishing, more universal or more singular – etc.
Paul Valéry