“And it’s just the same with the inner life of man. Anyone can know about it nowadays. How the devil am I to prove to my counsel that I don’t know my murderous impulses through C. G. Jung, jealousy through Marcel Proust, Spain through Hemingway, Paris through Ernst Jünger, Switzerland through Mark Twain, Mexico through Graham Greene, my fear of death through Bernanos, inability to ever reach my destination through Kafka, and all sorts of other things through Thomas Mann? It’s true, you never even have to read these authorities, you can absorb them through your friends who also live all their experiences second-hand.”

(Max Frisch, I’m Not Stiller, trans. Michael Bullock, p. 158.)