from the palace at 4 am...

"i whirl in the void. in broad daylight i contemplate space and the stars which traverse the liquid silver around me... again and again i'm captivated by constructions which delight me, and which live in their surreality - a beautiful palace, the tiled floor, black, white, red under my feet, the clustered columns, the smiling ceiling of air, and the precise mechanisms which are of no use. [and further] once the object is constructed, i tend to see in it, transformed and displaced, facts which have profoundly moved me, often without my realizing it; forms which i feel quite close to me, yet often without being able to identify them, which makes them all the more disturbing."

alberto giacometti, 1933 (as quoted in "a concise history of modern sculpture")