Whereas, of course, we can observe someone else without his knowledge (or his being aware of it) and observe how he walks or thinks, that is, his walking and his thinking, we can never observe ourselves without our knowledge (or being aware of it). If we observe ourselves, we are never observing ourselves, but someone else. Thus we can never talk about self-observation, or when we talk about the fact that we observe ourselves we are talking as someone we never are when we are not observing ourselves, and thus when we observe ourselves we are never observing the person we intended to observe but someone else. The concept of self-observation and so, also, of self-description is thus false. Looked at in this light, all concepts (ideas) [...] like self-observation, self-pity, self-accusation and so on, are false. We ourselves do not see ourselves, it is never possible for us to see ourselves. But we also cannot explain to someone else (a different object) what he is like, because we can only tell him how we see him, which proabably coincides with what he is but which we cannot explain in such a way as to say this is how he is. Thus everything is something quite different from what it is for us [...]. And always something quite different from what it is for everything else.

Thomas Bernhard, Walking, excerpt, quoted in the programme of Luna Park by Georges Aphergis, IRCAM, 2011, translated by Kenneth J. Northcott, in Thomas Bernhard, Three Novellas, The University of Chicago Press 2003