"But I always found what Alphonso told us at that time about the life and death of moths especially memorable, and of all creatures I still feel the greatest awe for them. In the warmer month of the year one or other of those nocturnal insects quite often strays indoors from the small garden behind my house. When I get up early in the morning, I find them clinging to the wall, motionless. I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way, since if you do not put them out again carefully they will stay where they are, never moving, until they will remain in the place where they came to grief even after death, held fast by the tiny claws that stiffened in their last agony, until a drought of air detaches them into a dusty corner."
- W. G. Sebald,
