Name one book that helped to change your life.

[betsuni]

221. One more: Sartre's "Nausea"

It changed my life:

"So I was in the park just now. The roots of the chestnut tree were sunk in the ground just under my bench. I couldn't remember it was a root anymore. ... It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things, this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality, were only an appearance, a veneer. ... If you existed, you had to exist all the way ... . This root -- there was nothing in relation to which it was absurd. Oh, how can I put it in words? Absurd: in relation to the stones, the tufts of yellow grass, the dry mud, the tree, the sky, the green benches. Absurd, irreducible; nothing -- not even a profound, secret upheaval of nature -- could explain it. ... I understood the Nausea, I possessed it. ... I began to laugh because I suddenly thought of the formidable springs described in books, full of crrackings, bursting, gigantic explosions."