The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet
...I am waiting for heaven to fall across the corner of my face. Saintliness means turning pain to good account. It means forcing the devil to be God. It means obtaining the recognition of evil... Through writing I have attained what I was seeking. What will guide me, as something learned, is not what I have lived, but the tone of which I tell of it. Not the anecdotes, but the work of art. Not my life, but the interpretation of it. It is what language offers me to evoke it, to talk about it, render it. To achieve my legend. I know what I want. I know where I'm going...