CANDID SIGN

I thought it would console me to talk about her, and now that it is done I have the strange sensation of having invented her in every particular, as entirely as the other characters who pass through my books. Did she thruly live? No, now that I think about it hard — she never lived. But from now on she is real, since I have created her, and this existence I give her would be a very candid sign of gratitude, if she had ever truly existed.
(Vladimir Nabokov | Mademoiselle O - traduzione dall'originale francese di Adam Thirlwell)