Exactly what I've been trying to say:

“The One, the flourish of stars which perhaps comprise the unattackable body of Truth. Yes, every passion of the world, of the living, of the tremor by which being is provoked, begins with this consensual lack: the One. And each persuades himself that the One is abrupt, that it is only attainable through outburst, through spark and revelation. Generous naiveté, but a necessary ardor, without which departure is defective, hardened. To move beyond the ecstatic ambition of the One is to build with patience, without denying the primordial burst, the stages of a knowledge at long last approached. The oeuvre in its continuity traces this itinerary, beyond which, perhaps, the more or less victorious accidents which are its markers or, to the letter, its milestones: books.”

—Édouard Glissant, Poetic Intention