Peter Handke

The child had her first schoolday toward the end of winter, in midterm. This had not been planned by the adult, it just happened. The school also happened to be a special sort of school—intended, that is, only for children of the one “people” deserving of the name, the people of which, long before its dispersion to the four corners of the earth, it was said that, even “without prophets,” “without sacrifices,” “without idols”—and even “without names”—it would still be a “people”; and whom, in the words of a later biblical scholar, those wishing to know “the tradition,” the “oldest and strictest law in the world” would be obliged to consult. It was the only actual “people” to which the adult had ever wished to belong.