“Do you think demolition can be beautiful?” said Kostka, and I smiled inwardly, recognizing in his response (delivered mildly, but conceived as a challenge) the Kostka (at once likeable and ridiculous) I had first met more than fifteen years before. I replied, “I know you’re a quiet workman on God’s eternal construction site and don’t like hearing about demolition, but what can I do? Myself, I’m not one of God’s bricklayers. Besides, if God’s bricklayers built real walls, I doubt we’d be able to demolish them. But instead of walls all I see is stage sets. And stage sets are made to be demolished.”
…
“What you’ve just said sounds good. But tell me: How can a skeptic like you be so sure he knows how to tell a stage set from a wall? Haven’t you ever doubted that the illusions you ridicule are really nothing but illusions? What if you’re wrong? What if they were genuine values and you were a demolisher of values?” And then: “A value debased and an illusion unmasked have the same pitiful form; they resemble each other and there is nothing easier than to mistake one for the other.”

The Joke
Milan Kundera