“She wonders whether the sentences go out looking for people to utter them, or whether it’s just the opposite and the sentences simply wait for someone to come along and make use of them, and at the same time she wonders if she really doesn’t have anything better to do than wonder about such things, what silliness, she thinks, and then she remembered that she doesn’t have anything better to do….

Probably, she thinks, the sentences all get overtaken sooner or later and are spoken by someone or other, somewhere or other….”

-from Visitation, by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated by Susan Bernofsky)