One thing that my mother once told me was that I fell quite ill when I was five or six. We could not call an ambulance because even if we did manage to get hold of one, we were too deeply snowed in. So my mother wrapped me in blankets, tied me on a sled and pulled me all night to Aschau where I was admitted to hospital. She visited me eight days later, coming on foot through deep snow. I do not remember this, but she was so amazed that I was absolutely without complaint. Apparently I had pulled a single piece of thread from my blanket on the bed and for eight days had played with it. I was not bored: this thread was full of stories and fantasies for me.
Werner Herzog, A Guide for the Perplexed, Conversations with Paul Cronin, p12-13 (Faber & Faber 2014)
