Go mad with this one-dimensional jigsaw

Question

E_E_E

R__HIN__O

GO__MAD

T_O___OTH

B_____E_N_T

SS_S___S

G__U_____N

HING_E

A_L___LE_Y

W___H_O

HO___T

R_UG

F_____I_G

N___UT

H_P

U__VA__R

TH___O_____N

YT

D_______V

Answer 1

The answer to this puzzle...

...is a quotation:

"God made everything out of nothing but the nothingness shows through" (Paul Valéry)

We find this by:

piecing together the letter fragments in a 'one-dimensional' way (i.e. in a line) and - importantly - by realising that we have to preserve spaces between the words that form! (Thereby making the quote rather appropriate - 'the nothingness shows through'!)

Doing so results in something that looks like this (in spoiler, below) and the final answer can be read off:

---

_{A note on my solve path:}

I initially spotted that the word 'NOTHINGNESS' could be formed by overlapping certain 'pieces', but then struggled to find other pieces that would slot into the gaps either side of the starting N and finishing S to form real words before and after it, assuming this word would form part of a longer complete sentence.

Next, I spotted the two pieces that together very nicely formed 'AUL VALERY' with a space in between the two parts. This helped me reason that the answer would (i) contain spaces as well as letters, and (ii) likely be a quote about nothingness by the philosopher-poet Paul Valéry, with his name probably appearing at the end as attribution.

I then pieced together the rest to form a recognisable sentence through trial-and-error, and confirmed the answer with a Google search. Everything nicely fallen into place!