" With an air somewhat distraught, nostalgic, and sad, a Spanish teenager glanced at the face and bust of a Sicilian-speaking postulant selling holy paraphernalia, who shook hundreds of small statues of Christ out of numerous plastic bags, letting them fall crackling into a trunk, while his father, rooting around in the bowl, taking one tiny crucifix after another in his hands, stared at them appraisingly. "

― Josef Winkler , Natura morta : eine römische Novelle