قال رايموند روسيل إنه بعد كتابه الأول كان يتوقّع أن يُحيط بشخصه في صباح اليوم التالي هالةٌ ما، وأن يرى كلُّ من في الشارع أنه كتب كتابًا. وهذه الرغبة الخفيّة يحملها كلُّ من يكتب. والحقّ أنّ أوّل نصٍّ يكتبه المرء لا يُكتب لغيره، ولا لأنه هو ما هو عليه؛ بل يكتب ليصير غيرَ ما هو عليه. يحاول أن يُعدّل طريقته في الوجود بفعل الكتابة.

“[Raymond Roussel] said that after his first book he expected that the next morning there would be a kind of aura around his person and that everyone in the street would be able to see that he had written a book. This is the obscure desire harboured by everyone who writes. It is true that the first text one writes is neither written for others, nor because one is what one is: one writes to become other than what one is. One tries to modify one's way of being through the act of writing.”Michel Foucault