My Virtual Reading Room

"Casanova considered the limits of human reason.  He established that, while it might be rare for a man to be driven insane, little was required to tip the balance.  All that was needed was a slight shift, and nothing would be as it formerly was.  In these deliberations, Casanova likened a lucid mind to a glass, which does not break of its own accord.  Yet how easily it is shattered.  One wrong move is all it takes."

(W.G. Sebald, "Going Abroad", in "Love Stories", Granta: the magazine of new writing, 1999)