“But it is true that one could not go very far. It is not just a matter of distance. Threats accumulate; one yields and abandons part of the terrain to be conquered. An imagination that accepted no bounds will be allowed to function only according to the laws of arbitrary utility. Unable to bear this inferior role for long, around his twentieth year it generally prefers to abandon a man to his sombre fate.
Though here and there he may later try to pull himself together, having felt that he is gradually losing all reason for living, incapable as he has become of rising to an exceptional situation such as love...he will hardly succeed. This is because from now on he belongs body and soul to an imperative practical necessity that he will not be allowed to lose sight of. All of his acts will lack scope, all of his ideas depth. From what happens to him and might happen to him, he will not only be able to imagine what links that event to a multitude of events like it, events he did not take part in, abortive events. That is, he will judge them in relation to one of these events, one with an outcome that is more reassuring than the others. On no account will he see in them his salvation.
Dear imagination, what I like about you most of all is that you are unforgiving.”
André Breton
