Alexandre Grégoire

I know myself: I do not possess any polemical skill, my opponent distracts me, he interests me more as a man than as an opponent, I take pains to listen and run the risk of believing him; indignation and the correct judgment return later, on the way downstairs, when they are no longer of any use. It was best for me to stick to writing.

—Primo Levi, The Periodic Table, Random House, New York, 1995, p. 218.