You are not dead and you are no wiser … You have learned nothing, except that solitude teaches you nothing, except that indifference teaches you nothing … Indifference is futile. Your refusal is futile. Your neutrality is meaningless. You believe that you are just passing by, drifting through the city, dogging the footsteps of the crowd, entering the play of shadows and cracks, but nothing has happened: no miracle, no explosion. With each passing day your patience has worn thinner. Time would have to stand still, but no one has the strength to fight against time. You may have cheated, snitching a few seconds, a few seconds … But the game is over. The world has not stirred and you have not changed. Indifference has not made you any different. You are not dead. You have not gone mad. There is no curse hanging over you … No one is condemning you and you have committed no offence. Time, which sees to everything, has provided the solution, despite yourself. Time, that knows the answer, has continued to flow. It is on a day like this one, a little later, a little earlier, that everything starts again, that everything starts, that everything continues … You are afraid. You are waiting. You are waiting, on Place Clichy, for the rain to stop falling.

— Georges Perec, The Man Who Sleeps/A Man Asleep