A matchless clarity came over me as I saw I had passed the peak of life. I scanned the day, one of the unpeculiar days in the recurrence of time — early November, slightly chilly, in the street tokens of autumn haphazardly expended in the tepid earth. I noticed a lightness that moved me. It probably was how things were, myself included, all of us transparent in the cadence of the world.

— Gottfried Benn