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I Can Prove At Any Time That My Education Tried To Make Another Person Out Of Me Than The One I Became. It Is For The Harm, Therefore, That My Educators Could Have Done Me In Accordance With Their Intentions That I Reproach Them; I Demand From Their Hands The Person I Now Am, And Since They Cannot Give Him To Me, I Make Of My Reproach And Laughter A Drumbeat Sounding In The World Beyond.

-Franz Kafka

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I Can Prove At

Franz Kafka

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I Can Prove At Any Time That My Education Tried To Make Another Person Out Of Me Than The One I Became. It Is For The Harm, Therefore, That My Educators Could Have Done Me In Accordance With Their Intentions That I Reproach Them; I Demand From Their Hands The Person I Now Am, And Since They Cannot Give Him To Me, I Make Of My Reproach And Laughter A Drumbeat Sounding In The World Beyond.

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I Do Not Read Advertisements. I Would Spend All Of My Time Wanting Things.

The Kafka Paradox: Art Depends On Truth, But Truth, Being Indivisable, Cannot Know Itself: To Tell The Truth Is To Lie. Thus The Writer Is The Truth, And Yet When He Speakes He Lies.

Telling The Truth

It's Sometimes Quite Astonishing That A Single, Average Life Is Enough To Encompass So Much That It's At All Possible Ever To Have Any Success In One's Work Here.

I Have The True Feeling Of Myself Only When I Am Unbearably Unhappy.

I Am Free And That Is Why I Am Lost.

In The Struggle Between Yourself And The World Second The World.

Suffering Is The Positive Element In This World, Indeed It Is The Only Link Between This World And The Positive.

World Suffering

I Am Too Tired, I Must Try To Rest And Sleep, Otherwise I Am Lost In Every Respect. What An Effort To Keep Alive! Erecting A Monument Does Not Require An Expenditure Of So Much Strength.

Torment Yourself As Little As Possible, Then You'll Torment Me Less.

I No Longer Know If I Wish To Drown Myself In Love, Vodka Or The Sea.

The Whole Visible World Is Perhaps Nothing Other Than A Motivation Of Man's Wish To Rest For A Moment An Attempt To Falsify The Fact Of Knowledge, To Try To Turn The Knowledge Into The Goal.

The Door Could Not Be Heard Slamming; They Had Probably Left It Open, As Is The Custom In Homes Where A Great Misfortune Has Occurred.

I Wanted To Escape The Unrest, To Shut Out The Voices Around Me And Within Me, So I Write.

The Messiah Will Come Only When He Is No Longer Necessary, He Will Come Only One Day After His Arrival, He Will Not Come On The Last Day, But On The Last Day Of All.

In Argument Similes Are Like Songs In Love; They Describe Much, But Prove Nothing.

Officials Are Highly Educated But One-sided; In His Own Department An Official Can Grasp Whole Trains Of Thought From A Single Word, But Let Him Have Something From Another Department Explained To Him ... He Won't Understand A Word Of It.

Train Of Thought

They're Talking About Things Of Which They Don't Have The Slightest Understanding, Anyway. It's Only Because Of Their Stupidity That They're Able To Be So Sure Of Themselves.

I Miss You Deeply, Unfathomably, Senselessly, Terribly.

In Paradise, As Always: That Which Causes The Sin And That Which Recognizes It For What It Is Are One. The Clear Conscience Is Evil, Which Is So Entirely Victorious That It Does Not Any Longer Consider The Leap From Left To Right Necessary.

We Live In An Age Which Is So Possessed By Demons, That Soon We Shall Only Be Able To Do Goodness And Justice In The Deepest Secrecy, As If It Were A Crime.

Isolation Is A Way To Know Ourselves.

Every Dog Has Like Me The Impulse To Question, And I Have Like Every Dog The Impulse Not To Answer.

The Observer Of The Soul Cannot Penetrate Into The Soul, But There Doubtless Is A Margin Where He Comes Into Contact With It. Recognition Of This Contact Is The Fact That Even The Soul Does Not Know Of Itself. Hence It Must Remain Unknown. That Would Be Sad Only If There Were Anything Apart From The Soul, But There Is Nothing Else.

If They Were Shocked, Then Gregor Had No Further Responsibility And Could Be Calm. But If They Took Everything Calmly, He He, Too, Had No Reason To Get Excited And Could, If He Hurried, Actually Be At The Station By Eight O'clock.

I Have Spent My Life Resisting The Desire To End It.

The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head. But How Free Myself And Free It Without Being Torn To Pieces. And A Thousand Times Rather Be Torn To Pieces Than Retain It In Me Or Bury It. That, Indeed, Is Why I Am Here, That Is Quite Clear To Me.

So Eager Are Our People To Obliterate The Present.

My 'fear' Is My Substance, And Probably The Best Part Of Me.

Everyone Carries A Room About Inside Him. This Fact Can Even Be Proved By Means Of The Sense Of Hearing. If Someone Walks Fast And One Pricks Up One’s Ears And Listens, Say In The Night, When Everything Round About Is Quiet, One Hears, For Instance, The Rattling Of A Mirror Not Quite Firmly Fastened To The Wall.

It Is Strange How Little Sharpsightedness Women Possess; They Only Notice Whether They Please, Then Whether They Arouse Pity, And Finally, Whether You Look For Compassion From Them. That Is All; Come To Think Of It, It May Even Be Enough, Generally Speaking.

We Are Sinful Not Only Because We Have Eaten Of The Tree Of Knowledge, But Also Because We Have Not Yet Eaten Of The Tree Of Life. The State In Which We Are Is Sinful, Irrespective Of Guilt.

From A Real Antagonist One Gains Boundless Courage.

One Day, A Leopard Stalked Into The Synagogue, Roaring And Lashing Its Tail. Three Weeks Later, It Had Become Part Of The Liturgy.

I Am Always Trying To Convey Something That Can’t Be Conveyed, To Explain Something Which Is Inexplicable, To Tell About Something I Have In My Bones, Something Which Can Be Expressed Only In The Bones.

The Fact That There Is Nothing But A Spiritual World Deprives Us Of Hope And Gives Us Certainty.

The More Horses You Yoke The Quicker Everything Will Go - Not The Rending Of The Block From Its Foundation, Which Is Impossible, But The Snapping Of The Traces And With That The Gay And Empty Journey.

Start With What Is Right Rather Than What Is Acceptable.

The Existence Of The Writer Is An Argument Against The Existence Of The Soul, For The Soul Has Obviously Taken Flight From The Real Ego, But Not Improved Itself, Only Become A Writer.

Should I Be Grateful Or Should I Curse The Fact That Despite All Misfortune I Can Still Feel Love, An Unearthly Love But Still For Earthly Objects.

A Book Must Be An Ice-axe To Break The Seas Frozen Inside Our Soul.

Was He An Animal, That Music Could Move Him So? He Felt As If The Way To The Unknown Nourishment He Longed For Were Coming To Light.

It Requires Enormous Presence Of Mind Or Rather Quickness Of Wit, When Opening Your Eyes To Seize Hold As It Were Of Everything In The Room At Exactly The Same Place Where You Had Let It Go On The Previous Evening. That Is Why The Moment Of Waking Up Was The Riskiest Moment Of The Day. Once That Was Well Over Without Deflecting You From Your Orbit, You Could Take Heart Of Grace For The Rest Of The Day.

Presence Of Mind

The Experience Of Life Consists Of The Experience Which The Spirit Has Of Itself In Matter And As Matter, In Mind And As Mind, In Emotion, As Emotion, Etc.

We Photograph Things In Order To Drive Them Out Of Our Minds. My Stories Are A Way Of Shutting My Eyes.

Photography Concentrates One's Eye On The Superficial. For That Reason It Obscures The Hidden Life Which Glimmers Through The Outlines Of Things Like A Play Of Light And Shade. One Can't Catch That Even With The Sharpest Lens.

Idleness Is The Beginning Of All Vice, The Crown Of All Virtues.

There Is Nothing Bad To Fear; Once You Have Crossed That Threshold, All Is Well. Another World, And You Do Not Have To Speak

A Picture Of My Existence... Would Show A Useless Wooden Stake Covered In Snow... Stuck Loosely At A Slant In The Ground In A Ploughed Field On The Edge Of A Vast Open Plain On A Dark Winter Night.

God Gives The Nuts, But He Does Not Crack Them.

We All Have Wings, But They Have Not Been Of Any Avail To Us And If We Could Tear Them Off, We Would Do So.

This Perversion Of The Truth, Familiar To The Artist Though It Was, Always Unnerved Him Afresh And Proved Too Much For Him. What Was A Consequence Of The Premature Ending Of His Fast Was Here Presented As The Cause Of It! To Fight Against This Lack Of Understanding, Against A Whole World Of Nonunderstanding, Was Impossible.

Kill Me, Or You Are A Murderer.

If Education Tries To Make Other Persons Out Of Us Than We Essentially Are, Deeper Inside, It Stultifies, And Reproach Matters.

Martyrs Do Not Underrate The Body, They Allow It To Be Elevated On The Cross. In This They Are At One With Their Antagonists.

We Were Expelled From Paradise, But It Was Not Destroyed. The Expulsion From Paradise Was In One Sense A Piece Of Good Fortune, For If We Had Not Been Expelled, Paradise Would Have Had To Be Destroyed.

One Advantage In Keeping A Diary Is That You Become Aware With Reassuring Clarity Of The Changes Which You Constantly Suffer.

The Spirit Becomes Free Only When It Ceases To Be A Support.

It Isn't Necessary That You Leave Home. Sit At Your Desk And Listen. Don't Even Listen, Just Wait. Don't Wait, Be Still And Alone. The Whole World Will Offer Itself To You.

There Is A Destination But No Way There; What We Refer To As Way Is Hesitation.

It Is Not Necessary To Accept Everything As True, One Must Only Accept It As Necessary.' 'a Melancholy Conclusion,' Said K. 'it Turns Lying Into A Universal Principle.

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Humility Provides Everyone, Even Him Who Despairs In Solitude, With The Strongest Relationship To His Fellow Man.

Productivity Is Being Able To Do Things That You Were Never Able To Do Before.

We Need The Books That Affect Us Like A Disaster

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How Pathetically Scanty My Self-knowledge Is Compared With, Say, My Knowledge Of My Room. There Is No Such Thing As Observation Of The Inner World, As There Is Of The Outer World.

Better To Have, And Not Need, Than To Need, And Not Have.

Disaster Preparedness

A Belief Is Like A Guillotine, Just As Heavy, Just As Light.

The Founder Brought The Laws From The Lawgiver; The Faithful Are Meant To Announce The Laws To The Lawgiver.

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Adam's First Domestic Pet After The Expulsion From Paradise Was The Serpent.

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Evil Is The Starry Sky Of The Good.

I Answer One Of Your Letters, Then Lie In Bed In Apparent Calm, But My Heart Beats Through My Entire Body And Is Conscious Only Of You. I Belong To You; There Is Really No Other Way Of Expressing It, And That Is Not Strong Enough.

I Never Imagined That So Many Days Would Ultimately Make Such A Small Life.

If It Had Been Possible To Build The Tower Of Babel Without Climbing It, It Would Have Been Permitted.

The Truth Is Always An Abyss. One Must — As In A Swimming Pool — Dare To Dive From The Quivering Springboard Of Trivial Everyday Experience And Sink Into The Depths, In Order To Later Rise Again — Laughing And Fighting For Breath — To The Now Doubly Illuminated Surface Of Things.

The Man In Ecstasy And The Man Drowning - Both Throw Up Their Arms. The First To Signify Harmony, The Second To Signify Strife With The Elements.

A Non-writing Writer Is A Monster Courting Insanity.

Picasso Only Registers The Deformities Which Have Not Yet Penetrated Our Consciousness. Art Is A Mirror Which Goes 'fast' Like A Watch - Sometimes.

Now I Can Look At You In Peace; I Don't Eat You Any More.

Death Confronts Us Not Unlike The Historical Battle Scene That Hangs On The Wall Of The Classroom. It Is Our Task To Obscure Or Quite Obliterate The Picture By Our Deeds While We Are Still In This World.

Every New Discovery Is Assumed At Once Into The Sum Total Of Knowledge, And With That Ceases In A Sense To Be A Discovery; It Dissolves Into The Whole And Disappears, And One Must Have A Trained Scientific Eye Even To Recognize It After That.

A Man Of Action Forced Into A State Of Thought Is Unhappy Until He Can Get Out Of It.

You See, I Have Only Such A Fugitive Awareness Of Things Around Me That I Always Feel They Were Once Real And Are Now Fleeting Away.

Celibacy And Suicide Are A Similar Levels Of Understanding, Suicide And A Martyr's Death Not So By Any Means, Perhaps Marriage And A Martyr's Death.

That's How It Will Be, Except That In Reality, Both Today And Later, One Will Stand There With A Palpable Body And A Real Head, A Real Forehead, That Is, For Smiting On With One's Hand.

Don't Despair, Not Even Over The Fact That You Don't Despair.

It's Impossible To Defend Oneself In The Absence Of Goodwill

If This Is What You Came For, Then I Didn't Send For You. Kafka (note To Himself In Journal)

If What Was Supposed To Have Been Destroyed In Paradise Was Destructible, Then It Was Not Decisive; But If It Was Indestructible, Then We Are Living In A False Belief.

Love Has As Few Problems As A Motor Car. The Only Problems Are The Driver, The Passengers, And The Road.

There Are Times When I Am Convinced I Am Unfit For Any Human Relationship.

Human Relations

Art Flies Around Truth, But With The Definite Intention Of Not Getting Burnt. Its Capacity Lies In Finding In The Dark Void A Place Where The Beam Of Light Can Be Intensely Caught, Without This Having Been Perceptible Before.

Writing Is A Deeper Sleep Than Death. Just As One Wouldn't Pull A Corpse From Its Grave, I Can't Be Dragged From My Desk At Night.

But Questions That Don’t Answer Themselves At The Very Moment Of Their Asking Are Never Answered.

One Of The Most Effective Means Of Seduction That Evil Has Is The Challenge To Struggle. It Is Like The Struggle With Women, Whichends In Bed. A Married Man's True Deviations From The Path Of Virtue Are, Rightly Understood, Never Gay.

I Do Not Speak As I Think, I Do Not Think As I Should, And So It All Goes On In Helpless Darkness.

They Were Offered The Choice Between Becoming Kings Or The Couriers Of Kings. The Way Children Would, They All Wanted To Be Couriers. Therefore There Are Only Couriers Who Hurry About The World, Shouting To Each Other - Since There Are No Kings - Messages That Have Become Meaningless. They Would Like To Put An End To This Miserable Life Of Theirs But They Dare Not Because Of Their Oaths Of Service.

From A Certain Point Onward There Is No Longer Any Turning Back. That Is The Point That Must Be Reached.

I Am A Cage, In Search Of A Bird.

We Need The Books That Affect Us Like A Disaster, That Grieve Us Deeply, Like The Death Of Someone We Loved More Than Ourselves, Like Being Banished Into Forests Far From Everyone, Like A Suicide. A Book Must Be The Axe For The Frozen Sea Inside Us.

Someone Must Have Slandered Josef K., For One Morning, Without Having Done Anything Truly Wrong, He Was Arrested.

My Peers, Lately, Have Found Companionship Through Means Of Intoxication - It Makes Them Sociable. I, However, Cannot Force Myself To Use Drugs To Cheat On My Loneliness - It Is All That I Have - And When The Drugs And Alcohol Dissipate, Will Be All That My Peers Have As Well.

He Is A Free And Secure Citizen Of The World Because He Is On A Chain That Is Long Enough To Allow Him Access To All Parts Of The Earth, And Yet Not So Long That He Could Be Swept Over The Edge Of It.

If You Become Involved With Me, You Will Be Throwing Yourself Into The Abyss.

They Did Not Know What We Can Now Guess At, Contemplating The Course Of History: That Change Begins In The Soul Before It Appears In Ordinary Existence.

The Meaning Of Life Is That It Stops.

Paths Are Made By Walking

They Say Ignorance Is Bliss.... They're Wrong

Ignorance Is Bliss

How Can One Take Delight In The World Unless One Flees To It For Refuge?

What I Write Is Different From What I Say, What I Say Is Different From What I Think, What I Think Is Different From What I Ought To Think And So It Goes Further Into The Deepest Darkness.

Love Is A Drama Of Contradictions.

Writing Means Revealing Oneself To Excess.

It Would Have Been So Pointless To Kill Himself That, Even If He Had Wanted To, The Pointlessness Would Have Made Him Unable.

Towards The Avoidance Of A Piece Of Verbal Confusion: What Is Intended To Be Actively Destroyed Must First Of All Have Been Firmly Grasped; What Crumbles Away Crumbles Away, But Cannot Be Destroyed.

The Fact That Our Task Is Exactly Commensurate With Our Life Gives It The Appearance Of Being Infinite.

As Gregor Samsa Awoke One Morning From Uneasy Dreams He Found Himself Transformed In His Bed Into A Gigantic Insect.

It's Only Because Of Their Stupidity That They're Able To Be So Sure Of Themselves.

The Ulterior Motives With Which You Absorb And Assimilate Evil Are Not Your Own But Those Of Evil. The Animal Wrests The Whip From Its Master And Whips Itself In Order To Become Master, Not Knowing That This Is Only A Fantasy Produced By A New Knot In The Master's Whiplash.

Writing Is A Sweet, Wonderful Reward.

If All Responsibility Is Imposed On You, Then You May Want To Exploit The Moment And Want To Be Overwhelmed By The Responsibility;yet If You Try, You Will Notice That Nothing Was Imposed On You, But That You Are Yourself This Responsibility.

This Morning, For The First Time In A Long Time, The Joy Again Of Imagining A Knife Twisted In My Heart.

No," Said The Priest, "you Don't Need To Accept Everything As True, You Only Have To Accept It As Necessary." "depressing View," Said K. "the Lie Made Into The Rule Of The World.

If The Book We Are Reading Does Not Wake Us, As With A Fist Hammering On Our Skull, Why Then Do We Read? So That It Shall Make Us Happy? Good God, We Should Also Be Happy If We Had No Books, And Such Books As Make Us Happy We Could, If Need Be, Write Ourselves. But What We Must Have Are Those Books Which Come Upon Us Like Ill Fortune, And Distress Us Deeply, Like The Death Of One We Love Better Than Ourselves; Like Suicide. A Book Must Be An Ice-axe To Break The Sea Frozen Inside Us.

True Undoubting Is The Teacher's Part, Continual Undoubting The Part Of The Pupil.

Dread Of Night. Dread Of Not-night.

Two Tasks At The Beginning Of Your Life: To Narrow Your Orbit More And More, And Ever And Again To Check Whether You Are Not In Hiding Somewhere Outside Your Orbit.

I Passed By The Brothel As Though Past The House Of A Beloved.

Writing [is] A Form Of Prayer.

If There Is A Transmigration Of Souls Then I Am Not Yet On The Bottom Rung. My Life Is A Hesitation Before Birth.

I Made The Remark That I Don't Avoid People In Order To Live Quietly, But Rather In Order To Be Able To Die Quietly.

You Are So Vulnerably Haunting. Your Eeriness Is Terrifyingly Irresistible.

Youth Is Happy Because It Has The Ability To See Beauty. Anyone Who Keeps The Ability To See Beauty Never Grows Old.

Inspirational Birthday

Utterance Does Not In Principle Mean A Weakening Of Conviction--that Would Not Be Anything To Be Deplored--but A Weakness Of Conviction.

Art Is For The Artist Is Only Suffering Through Which He Releases Himself For Further Suffering.

For Everything Outside The Phenomenal World, Language Can Only Be Used Allusively, But Never Even Approximately In A Comparative Way, Since, Corresponding As It Does To The Phenomenal World, It Is Concerned Only With Property And Its Relations.

In Me, By Myself, Without Human Relationship, There Are No Visible Lies. The Limited Circle Is Pure.

Slept, Awoke, Slept, Awoke, Miserable Life.

If The Book We Are Reading Does Not Wake Us, As With A Fist Hammering On Our Skull, Why Then Do We Read It?

If The Literature We Are Reading Does Not Wake Us, Why Then Do We Read It? A Literary Work Must Be An Ice-axe To Break The Sea Frozen Inside Us.

The Purpose Of A Story Is To Be An Axe That Breaks Up The Ice Within Us.

He Thought Back On His Family With Deep Emotion And Love. His Conviction That He Would Have To Disappear Was, If Possible, Even Firmer Than His Sister's. He Remained In This State Of Empty And Peaceful Reflection Until The Tower Clock Struck Three In The Morning. He Still Saw That Outside The Window Everything Was Beginning To Grow Light. Then, Without His Consent, His Head Sank Down To The Floor, And From His Nostrils Streamed His Last Weak Breath.

The Decisive Moment In Human Evolution Is Perpetual. That Is Why The Revolutionary Spiritual Movements That Declare All Former Things Worthless Are In The Right, For Nothing Has Yet Happened.

Only Our Concept Of Time Makes It Possible For Us To Speak Of The Day Of Judgment By That Name In Reality It Is A Summary Court In Perpetual Session.

It Receives You When You Come And Dismisses You When You Go.

Many A Book Is Like A Key To Unknown Chambers Within The Castle Of One’s Own Self.

One Reads In Order To Ask Questions

There's No Quiet Place Here On Earth For Our Love, Not In The Village And Not Anywhere Else, So I Picture A Grave, Deep And Narrow, In Which We Embrace As If Clamped Together, I Bury My Face Against You, You Yours Against Me, And No One Will Ever See Us.

First Impressions Are Always Unreliable.

First Impression

There Sat I, A Faded Being, Under Faded Leaves.

The Right Understanding Of Any Matter And A Misunderstanding Of The Same Matter Do Not Wholly Exclude Each Other.

Misunderstanding

What Is Gayer Than Believing In A Household God?

By Imposing Too Great A Responsibility, Or Rather, All Responsibility, On Yourself, You Crush Yourself.

Simply Wait, Be Quiet, Still The World Will Freely Offer Itself To You.

Nothing, You Know, Gives The Body Greater Satisfaction Than Ordering People About, Or At Least Believing In One's Ability To Do So.

I Don't Know Who The Great Lawyers Are, And I Presume You Can't Get To Them. I Know Of No Case Where It Can Be Said For Certain That They Took Part. They Defend Some People, But You Can't Get Them To Do That Through Your Own Efforts, They Only Defend The Ones They Want To Defend. But I Assume A Case They Take On Must Have Progressed Beyond The Lower Court. It's Better Not To Think Of Them At All, Otherwise You'll Find The Consultations With The Other Lawyers, Their Advice And Their Assistance, Extremely Disgusting And Useless.

Human Nature, Essentially Changeable, As Unstable As The Dust, Can Endure No Restraint; If It Binds Itself It Soon Begins To Tear Madly At Its Bonds, Until It Rends Everything Asunder, The Wall, The Bonds, And Its Very Self.

My Guiding Principle Is This: Guilt Is Never To Be Doubted.

Guiding Principles

Every Word First Looks Around In Every Direction Before Letting Itself Be Written Down By Me.

I Write Differently From What I Speak, I Speak Differently From What I Think, I Think Differently From The Way I Ought To Think, And So It All Proceeds Into Deepest Darkness.

My Doubts Stand In A Circle Around Every Word, I See Them Before I See The Word, But What Then! I Do Not See The Word At All, I Invent It.

I Hate Everything That Does Not Relate To Literature, Conversations Bore Me (even If They Relate To Literature), To Visit People Bores Me, The Sorrows And Joys Of My Relatives Bore Me To The Very Soul. Conversation Takes The Importance, The Seriousness, The Truth, Out Of Everything I Think.

In A Certain Sense You Deny The Existence Of This World. You Explain Life As A State Of Rest, A State Of Rest In Motion.

People Keep Themselves At A Tolerable Height Above An Infernal Abyss Toward Which They Gravitate Only By Putting Out All Their Strength And Lovingly Helping One Another. They Are Tied Together By Ropes, And It's Bad Enough When The Ropes Around An Individual Loosen And He Drops Somewhat Lower Than The Others Into Empty Space; Ghastly When The Ropes Break And He Falls. That's Why We Should Cling To The Others.

Now The Sirens Have A Still More Fatal Weapon Than Their Song, Namely Their Silence... Someone Might Possibly Have Escaped From Their Singing; But From Their Silence, Certainly Never.

One Can Disintegrate The World By Means Of Very Strong Light. For Weak Eyes The World Becomes Solid, For Still Weaker Eyes It Seems To Develop Fists, For Eyes Weaker Still It Becomes Shamefaced And Smashes Anyone Who Dares To Gaze Upon It.

I Never Wish To Be Easily Defined.

I, However, Cannot Force Myself To Use "meat Drugs" To Cheat On My Loneliness.

It Is Often Safer To Be In Chains Than To Be Free.

He Is Terribly Afraid Of Dying Because He Hasn’t Yet Lived.

I Cannot Make You Understand. I Cannot Make Anyone Understand What Is Happening Inside Me. I Cannot Even Explain It To Myself.

The Indestructible Is One: It Is Each Individual Human Being And, At The Same Time, It Is Common To All, Hence The Incomparably Indivisible Union That Exists Between Human Beings.

The Limited Circle Is Pure.

Follow Your Most Intense Obsessions Mercilessly.

Just Because Your Doctor Has A Name For Your Condition, Doesn't Mean He Knows What It Is.

From The True Antagonist Illimitable Courage Is Transmitted To You. To What Indifference People May Come, To What Profound Conviction Of Having Lost The Right Track Forever.

Each Of Us Has His Own Way Of Emerging From The Underworld, Mine Is By Writing. That's Why The Only Way I Can Keep Going, If At All, Is By Writing, Not Through Rest And Sleep. I Am Far More Likely To Achieve Peace Of Mind Through Writing Than The Capacity To Write Through Peace.

One Has Just Been Sent Out As A Biblical Dove, Has Found Nothing Green, And Slips Back Into The Darkness Of The Ark

My Job Is Unbearable To Me Because It Conflicts With My Only Desire And My Only Calling, Which Is Literature. Since I Am Nothing But Literature And Can And Want To Be Nothing Else, My Job Will Never Take Possession Of Me, It May, However, Shatter Me Completely, And This Is By No Means A Remote Possibility.

Everyone Strives To Attain The Law,' Answers The Man, 'how Does It Come About, Then, That In All These Years No One Has Come Seeking Admittance But Me?' The Doorkeeper Perceives That The Man Is Nearing His End And His Hearing Is Failing, So He Bellows In His Ear: 'no One But You Could Gain Admittance Through This Door, Since This Door Was Intended For You. I Am Now Going To Shut It.

And I Leave My Post Of Observation And Find I Have Had Enough Of This Outside Life; I Feel That There Is Nothing More That I Can Learn Here, Either Now Or At Any Time. And I Long To Say A Last Goodbye To Everything Up Here, To Go Down Into My Burrow Never To Return Again, Let Things Take Their Course, And Not Try To Retard Them With My Profitless Vigils.

The Various Forms Of Despair At The Various Stations On The Road.

Tyranny Or Slavery, Born Of Selfishness, Are The Two Educational Methods Of Parents; All Gradations Of Tyranny Or Slavery.

One Must Not Cheat Anyone, Not Even The World Of Its Victory.

Don't Bend; Don't Water It Down; Don't Try To Make It Logical; Don't Edit Your Own Soul According To The Fashion. Rather, Follow Your Most Intense Obsessions Mercilessly.

It Was Like This. The Brain Could No Longer Bear The Worries And Pains That Were Imposed On It. It Said: "i'm Giving Up; But If There Is Anyone Else Here Who Is Interested In Preserving The Whole, Let Him Assume Part Of My Burden And It Will Be Alright For A Bit.

I Have Hardly Anything In Common With Myself And Should Stand Very Quietly In A Corner, Content That I Can Breathe.

If I Shall Exist Eternally, How Shall I Exist Tomorrow?

Written Kisses Don't Reach Their Destination, Rather They Are Drunk On The Way By The Ghosts.

There Will Be No Proof That I Ever Was A Writer.

The True Way Goes Over A Rope Which Is Not Stretched At Any Great Height But Just Above The Ground. It Seems More Designed To Make People Stumble Than To Be Walked Upon.

Writers Speak Stench.

Hold Fast To The Diary From Today On! Write Regularly! Don't Surrender! Even If No Salvation Should Come, I Want To Be Worthy Of It Every Moment.

A First Sign Of The Beginning Of Understanding Is The Wish To Die.

All Human Errors Are Impatience, A Premature Breaking Off Of Methodical Procedure, An Apparent Fencing-in Of What Is Apparently At Issue.

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