Confessions of an Opium Eater

Gilbert De Quincey:
[narration] In that first instance of her image passing the lenses of my eyes, I felt that I was hanging in the immensity of space and she was floating with me - chained, locked inextricably together; arms, brains, heart pulsations, unable to flee, unable to break apart; sinking, sinking through the inexhaustible depths of time. I forgot the long journey by the sea. I forgot the pain. I forgot my mission. Was it the heavy, drifting perfume of the incense or some feverish fantasy searing my brain? Whatever it was, as I looked at her for a heartbeat I knew whoever she was, whatever she might be, this woman had to be a kind of fate for me.

Gilbert De Quincey:
[narration] When the dreams of the dark, idle, monstrous phenomenae move forever forward... wild, barbarous, capricious into the great yawning darkness... to be fixed for centuries in secret rooms. De Quincey, the artist ?, De Quincey, the pagan priest, to be worshiped, to be sacrificed. What is a dream and what is reality? Sometimes a man's life can be a nightmare; other times, cannot a nightmare be life? And the voices that I heard, were they the voices of some strange imitation of men in some strange, writhing jungle of my imagination? Was this opium or was it reality? Was I dead? Or I was I only beginning to live?