I was a loner as a child, and for me everything was a strange symbol. I've stayed that way all my life, I still live in a castle of meanings, not things. I still depend on others, the "grown-ups," the ones who handle things. There are people who've worked at lathes ever since they were children. At a tool that makes things. That can have no other meaning than the things it makes. When I see a machine, I look at it as if it were a magic castle, I imagine tiny men turning amongst the cogs. A  lathe. God knows what a lathe is. Do you know?  

—Italo Calvino