In this book, Xavier Rubert de Ventós writes «unashamedly of his shame», trying to explain just that which he experiences openly, to talk unashamedly of his shame, candidly of his obsessions and his passions, and to mix lies and truths until they are indistinguishable.

«I only write,» says the author, «when feelings or ideas seem to me like intimate demons that I attempt to banish with literature. But it’s not easy expressing oneself naturally and with confidence, overcoming one’s own vertigo and criticism, letting thought advance with the certainty one will find what one is looking for, the same certainty with which the king sits down without looking behind him, certain he will find the seat someone has held out for him.»

«A reasonably sensual environment and even being relatively sexually gymnastic doubtless helps the spirit; what this doesn’t allow for is any sort of sentimental attachment. The brain is not robbed of energy by sensual furnishing or prophylactic eroticism, that is, everything that pacifies a body that must function at the same time as its source of energy and its instrument. Thought allows us, then, that which stabilises us but not that which mobilises us; it tolerates what gratifies us but not what seduces us. More than in repression, thought and culture are based on coldness, built on egotism and maintained by narcissism. We are perhaps forgiven by pleasure, but not by love.»