You Should Have Left

by Daniel Kehlmann

There’s nothing in the world that stays the way it is.

But I didn’t want to be someone who can’t cope with everyday life. People have simply agreed that driving a car is something harmless.

Even though it just happened, it seems to me as if it were a long time ago, and I know that in a moment I’ll no longer be sure whether it really happened. Write it down so that you remember, so that you can never claim it was only your imagination. But even as I’m writing this, I’m thinking that it must have been my imagination.

In a movie it’s funny when a life falls apart, because the people say clever things while it’s happening, but in reality it’s only dismal and repugnant.