The concept of a strange loop was originally developed in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.

In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.Hofstadter had previously expressed disappointment with how Gödel, Escher, Bach, which won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, was received.

In the preface to its 20th anniversary edition, he laments that the book was perceived as a hodgepodge of neat things with no central theme.

He writes: "GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter.

"[1] Hofstadter seeks to remedy this problem in I Am a Strange Loop by focusing on and expounding the central message of Gödel, Escher, Bach.