“I always think that life still lies ahead of me, as though I had organized my previous life only for a short while and I were about to start my real life not too far in the future,” thought Nagl.

“It all simply happens to me,” he kept thinking. “I live from day to day, without asking many questions. Mostly I take everything for granted so that I don’t think about it. I don’t resist, nor do I give in, nor do I tell myself I have no choice.”

—Gerhard Roth, Winterreise