The Book And The Brotherhood - pg. 294

'Perhaps you don't mind the idea of a world without books?'

'It's inevitable, so it must be understood, it must be embraced, even loved.'

'So after all you turn out to be a historical materialist! What about your book?'

'It will perish with the rest. Plato, Shakespeare, Hegel, they'll all burn, and I shall burn too. But before that my book will have had a certain influence, that's its point, that's what I've been striving for all these years, that little bit of influence. That's what's worth doing, and it's the only thing that's worth doing now, to look at the future and make some sense of it and touch it. Look, Gerard, I don't think I'm God, I don't think I'm Hegel, I don't even think I'm Feuerbach -'"