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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.

-Franz Kafka

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The Decisive Moment In

Franz Kafka

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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.

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Anyone Who Loves His Neighbor Within The Limits Of The World Is Doing No More And No Less Injustice Than Someone Who Loves Himself Within The Limits Of The World.

I Can Love Only What I Can Place So High Above Me That I Cannot Reach It.

I Miss You Deeply, Unfathomably, Senselessly, Terribly.

You Do Not Need To Leave Your Room. Remain Sitting At Your Table And Listen. Do Not Even Listen, Simply Wait, Be Quiet, Still And Solitary. The World Will Freely Offer Itself To You To Be Unmasked, It Has No Choice, It Will Roll In Ecstasy At Your Feet.

Psychology Is The Description Of The Reflection Of The Terrestial World In The Heavenly Plane, Or, More Correctly, The Description Of A Reflection Such As We, Soaked As We Are In Our Terrestial Nature, Imagine It, For No Reflection Actually Occurs, Only We See Earth Wherever We Turn.

There Art Two Cardinal Sins From Which All Others Spring: Impatience And Laziness.

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

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

Love Is A Drama Of Contradictions.

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

Believing Means Liberating The Indestructible Element In Oneself, Or, More Accurately, Liberating Oneself, Or, More Accurately, Being Indestructible, Or, More Accurately, Being.

Sleep Is The Most Innocent Creature There Is And A Sleepless Man The Most Guilty.

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.

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.

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

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.

If I Didn't Have My Parents To Think About I'd Have Given In My Notice A Long Time Ago, I'd Have Gone Up To The Boss And Told Him Just What I Think, Tell Him Everything I Would, Let Him Know Just What I Feel. He'd Fall Right Off His Desk! And It's A Funny Sort Of Business To Be Sitting Up There At Your Desk, Talking Down At Your Subordinates From Up There, Especially When You Have To Go Right Up Close Because The Boss Is Hard Of Hearing.

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.

I Am A Cage, In Search Of A Bird.

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

One Must Fight To Get To The Top, Especially If One Starts At The Bottom.

Marrying, Founding A Family, Accepting All The Children That Come, Supporting Them In This Insecure World, And Perhaps Even Guiding Them A Little, Is, I Am Convinced, The Utmost A Human Being Can Succeed In Doing At All.

But Eternity Is Not Temporality At A Standstill. What Is Oppressive About The Concept Of The Eternal Is The Justification, Incomprehensible To Us, That Time Must Undergo In Eternity And The Logical Conclusion Of That, The Justification Of Ourselves As We Are.

I Believe That We Should Read Only Those Books That Bite And Sting Us. If A Book We Are Reading Does Not Rouse Us With A Blow To The Head, Then Why Read It?

My Grandfather Used To Say: Life Is Astoundingly Short. To Me, Looking Back Over It, Life Seems So Foreshortened That I Scarcely Understand, For Instance, How A Young Man Can Decide To Ride Over To The Next Village Without Being Afraid That -not To Mention Accidents- Even The Span Of A Normal Happy Life May Fall Far Short Of The Time Needed For Such A Journey.

The Dream Reveals The Reality Which Conception Lags Behind. That Is The Horror Of Life-the Terror Of Art.

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.

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

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

Expulsion From Paradise Is In Its Main Aspect Eternal: That Is To Say, Although Expulsion From Paradise Is Final, And Life In Theworld Unavoidable, The Eternity Of The Process (or, Expressed In Temporal Terms, The Eternal Repetition Of The Process) Nevertheless Makes It Possible Not Only That We Might Remain In Paradise Permanently, But That We May In Fact Be There Permanently, No Matter Whether We Know It Here Or Not.

Knowledge We Have. Anyone Who Strives For It With Particular Intensity Is Suspect Of Striving Against It.

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

One Morning, As Gregor Samsa Was Waking Up From Anxious Dreams, He Discovered That In His Bed He Had Been Changed Into A Monstrous Bug.

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.

When One Has Once Accepted And Absorbed Evil, It No Longer Demands The Unfitness Of The Means. The Ulterior Motives With Which Youabsorb And Assimilate Evil Are Not Your Own But Those Of Evil.... Evil Is Whatever Distracts. Evil Knows Of The Good, But Good Does Not Know Of Evil. Knowledge Of Oneself Is Something Only Evil Has. One Means That Evil Has Is The Dialogue.... One Cannot Pay Evil In Installments--and One Always Keeps On Trying To.

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.

I’m Doing Badly, I’m Doing Well; Whichever You Prefer.

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.

In A Way, You Are Poetry Material; You Are Full Of Cloudy Subtleties I Am Willing To Spend A Lifetime Figuring Out. Words Burst In Your Essence And You Carry Their Dust In The Pores Of Your Ethereal Individuality.

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.

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.

Isolation Is A Way To Know Ourselves.

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

Religions Get Lost As People Do.

This Inescapable Duty To Observe Oneself: If Someone Else Is Observing Me, Naturally I Have To Observe Myself Too; If None Observe Me, I Have To Observe Myself All The Closer.

The Ulterior Motives With Which You Absorb And Assimilate Evil Are Not Your Own But Those Of Evil.

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

Two Possibilities: Making Oneself Infinitely Small Or Being So. The Second Is Perfection, That Is To Say, Inactivity, The First Is Beginning, That Is To Say, Action.

In A Certain Sense The Good Is Comfortless.

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.

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.

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

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

You Need Not Even Listen, Just Wait...the World Will Offer Itself Freely To You, Unmasking Itself.

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

Believing In Progress Does Not Mean Believing That Any Progress Has Yet Been Made.

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

Writing Is A Sweet, Wonderful Reward.

The Worries That Are The Burden Of Which The Privileged Person Makes An Excuse In Dealing With The Oppressed Person Are In Fact The Worries About Preserving His Privileged Condition.

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

Only The Moment Counts. It Determines Life.

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.

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 True Word Leads; The Untrue Misleads.

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

A Book Must Be The Ax For The Frozen Sea Within Us.

There Is An Infinite Amount Of Hope In The Universe ... But Not For Us.

I Do Not See The World At All; I Invent It.

"don't You Want To Join Us?" I Was Recently Asked By An Acquaintance When He Ran Across Me Alone After Midnight In A Coffeehouse That Was Already Almost Deserted. "no, I Don't," I Said.

The Truth Is Always An Abyss.

Every Revolution Evaporates And Leaves Behind Only The Slime Of A New Bureaucracy.

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

One Of The First Signs Of The Beginning Of Understanding Is The Wish To Die. This Life Appears Unbearable, Another Unattainable. One Is No Longer Ashamed Of Wanting To Die; One Asks To Be Moved From The Old Cell, Which One Hates, To A New One, Which One Willl Only In Time Come To Hate. In This There Is Also A Residue Of Belief That During The Move The Master Will Chance To Come Along The Corridor, Look At The Prisoner And Say: "this Man Is Not To Be Locked Up Again, He Is To Come With Me.

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

Alas," Said The Mouse, "the Whole World Is Growing Smaller Every Day. At The Beginning It Was So Big That I Was Afraid, I Kept Running And Running, And I Was Glad When I Saw Walls Far Away To The Right And Left, But These Long Walls Have Narrowed So Quickly That I Am In The Last Chamber Already, And There In The Corner Stands The Trap That I Must Run Into." "you Only Need To Change Your Direction," Said The Cat, And Ate It Up.

Always First Draw Fresh Breath After Outbursts Of Vanity And Complacency.

We Were Created In Order To Live In Paradise, And Paradise Was Ordained To Serve Us. What Was Ordained For Us Has Been Changed; It Is Not Said That This Has Also Happened With What Was Ordained For Paradise.

The Delights Of This Life Are Not Its Own, But Our Fear Of The Ascent Into A Higher Life; The Torments Of This Life Are Not Its Own, But Our Self-torment Because Of That Fear.

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

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.

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.

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.

A Lawyer Is A Person Who Writes A 10,000-word Document And Calls It A "brief."

No Matter How Much You Keep Encouraging Someone Who Is Blindfolded To Stare Through The Cloth, He Still Won’t See A Thing.".

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.

Everything Is Deception: Seeking The Minimum Of Illusion, Keeping Within The Ordinary Limitations, Seeking The Maximum. In The First Case One Cheats The Good, By Trying To Make It Too Easy For Oneself To Get It, And The Evil By Imposing All Too Unfavorable Conditions Of Warfare On It. In The Second Case One Cheats The Good By Keeping As Aloof From It As Possible, And The Evil By Hoping To Make It Powerless Through Intensifying It To The Utmost.

Most Men Are Not Wicked... They Are Sleep-walkers, Not Evil Evildoers.

Evil Is Whatever Distracts.

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.

You Can Choose To Be Free , But It's Last Decision You'll Ever Make

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

It Would Be Very Unjust To Say That You Deserted Me, But That I Was Deserted, And Sometimes Terribly So, Is True.

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.

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

Misunderstanding

He Was A Tool Of The Boss, Without Brains Or Backbone.

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

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

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

Let Me Remind You Of The Old Maxim: People Under Suspicion Are Better Moving Than At Rest, Since At Rest They May Be Sitting In The Balance Without Knowing It, Being Weighed Together With Their Sins.

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

All Knowledge, The Totality Of All Questions And Answers, Is Contained In The Dog.

Questions And Answers

A Stair Not Worn Hollow By Footsteps Is, Regarded From Its Own Point Of View, Only A Boring Something Made Of Wood.

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.

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.

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

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

What A Fate: To Be Condemned To Work For A Firm Where The Slightest Negligence At Once Gave Rise To The Gravest Suspicion! Were All The Employees Nothing But A Bunch Of Scoundrels, Was There Not Among Them One Single Loyal Devoted Man Who, Had He Wasted Only An Hour Or So Of The Firm's Time In The Morning, Was So Tormented By Conscience As To Be Driven Out Of His Mind And Actually Incapable Of Leaving His Bed?

Evil Is The Radiation Of The Human Consciousness In Certain Transitional Positions. It Is Not Actually The Sensual World That Is Amere Appearance; What Is So Is The Evil Of It, Which, Admittedly, Is What Constitutes The Sensual World In Our Eyes.

There Is A Goal But No Way; What We Call The Way Is Mere Wavering.

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

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

There's An Infinite Amount Of Hope But Not For Us.

I See, These Books Are Probably Law Books, And It Is An Essential Part Of The Justice Dispensed Here That You Should Be Condemned Not Only In Innocence But Also In Ignorance.

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.

In A Way, I Was Safe Writing

Everything You Say Is Boring And Incomprehensible, But That Alone Doesn't Make It True.

Anyone Who Renounces The World Must Love All Men, For He Renounces Their World Too. He Thus Begins To Have Some Inkling Of The True Nature Of Man, Which Cannot But Be Loved, Always Assuming That One Is Its Peer.

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

He Who Seeks Does Not Find, But He Who Does Not Seek Will Be Found.

I Am Away From Home And Must Always Write Home, Even If Any Home Of Mine Has Long Since Floated Away Into Eternity.

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.

Either The World Is So Tiny Or We Are Enormous; In Either Case, We Fill It Completely.

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

The Mediation By The Serpent Was Necessary. Evil Can Seduce Man, But Cannot Become Man.

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.

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.

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

But What If All The Tranquility, All The Comfort, All The Contentment Were Now To Come To A Horrifying End?

Ours Is A Lost Generation, It May Be, But It Is More Blameless Than Those Earlier Generations.

Maybe Innocence Makes Its Way Easiest Through The Elemental Chaos Of This World.

It Is Comforting To Reflect That The Disproportion Of Things In The World Seems To Be Only Arithmetical.

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.

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.

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.

A Book Should Serve As An Axe To The Ice Inside Us.

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

Ignorance Is Bliss

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

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.

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

I Usually Solve Problems By Letting Them Devour Me.

Writing [is] A Form Of Prayer.

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

I Am A Retiring, Silent, Unsociable, And Discontent Person.

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

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.

I'm Thinking Only Of My Illness And My Health, Though Both, The First As Well As The Second, Are You.

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

Human Judgment Of Human Actions Is True And Void , That Is To Say, First True And Then Void.... The Judgment Of The Word Is True, The Judgment In Itself Is Void.... Only He Who Is A Party Can Really Judge, But As A Party He Cannot Judge. Hence It Follows That There Is No Possibility Of Judgment In The World, Only A Glimmer Of It.

I Think We Ought To Read Only The Kind Of Books That Wound And Stab Us. If The Book We Are Reading Doesn't Wake Us Up With A Blow On The Head, What Are We Reading It For?

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.

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

I Need Solitude For My Writing; Not 'like A Hermit' - That Wouldn't Be Enough - But Like A Dead Man.

Even The Merest Gesture Is Holy If It Is Filled With Faith.

You're Not Cross With Me, Though?" He Said. She Pulled Her Hand Away And Answered, "no, No, I'm Never Cross With Anyone.

Because Of Impatience We Were Driven Out [of Paradise]; Because Of Impatience We Cannot Return.

Our Art Is A Way Of Being Dazzled By Truth: The Light On The Grotesquely Grimacing Retreating Face Is True, And Nothing Else.

There Is Nothing Besides A Spiritual World; What We Call The World Of The Senses Is The Evil In The Spiritual World, And What We Call Evil Is Only The Necessity Of A Moment In Our Eternal Evolution.

I Can Once More Carry On A Conversation With Myself, And Don't Stare So Into Complete Emptiness. Only In This Way Is There Any Possibility Of Improvement For Me.

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.

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

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

Guiding Principles

I Can't Feel A Thing; All Mournful Petal Storms Are Dancing Inside The Very Private Spring Of My Head.

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

When One Has Once Accepted And Absorbed Evil, It No Longer Demands To Be Believed.

I Dream Of A Grave, Deep And Narrow, Where We Could Clasp Each Other In Our Arms As With Clamps, And I Would Hide My Face In You And You Would Hide Your Face In Me, And Nobody Would Ever See Us Any More

To Write Prescriptions Is Easy, But To Come To An Understanding With People Is Hard.

At That Point I Asked Myself: How Is It That She Is Not Amazed At Herself, That She Keeps Her Lips Closed And Makes No Such Remark?

No One Can Crave What Truly Harms Him.

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.

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.

There Are Some Things One Can Only Achieve By A Deliberate Leap In The Opposite Direction.

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.

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.

One Tells As Few Lies As Possible Only By Telling As Few Lies As Possible, And Not By Having The Least Possible Opportunity To Do So.

The Thornbush Is The Old Obstacle In The Road. It Must Catch Fire If You Want To Go Further.

Self-control Means Wanting To Be Effective At Some Random Point In The Infinite Radiations Of My Spiritual Existence.

People Label Themselves With All Sorts Of Adjectives. I Can Only Pronounce Myself As 'nauseatingly Miserable Beyond Repair'.

Last Night I Dreamed About You. What Happened In Detail I Can Hardly Remember, All I Know Is That We Kept Merging Into One Another. I Was You, You Were Me. Finally You Somehow Caught Fire.

Like Tired Dogs They Stand There, Because They Use Up All Their Strength In Remaining Upright In One's Memory.

I Want In Fact More Of You. In My Mind I Am Dressing You With Light; I Am Wrapping You Up In Blankets Of Complete Acceptance And Then I Give Myself To You. I Long For You; I Who Usually Long Without Longing, As Though I Am Unconscious And Absorbed In Neutrality And Apathy, Really, Utterly Long For Every Bit Of You.

April 27. Incapable Of Living With People, Of Speaking. Complete Immersion In Myself, Thinking Of Myself. Apathetic, Witless, Fearful. I Have Nothing To Say To Anyone - Never.

Faith, Like A Guillotine. As Heavy, As Light.

Life Is Merely Terrible; I Feel It As Few Others Do. Often — And In My Inmost Self Perhaps All The Time — I Doubt Whether I Am A Human Being.

The Person I Am In The Company Of My Sisters Has Been Entirely Different From The Person I Am In The Company Of Other People. Fearless, Powerful, Surprising, Moved As I Otherwise Am Only When I Write.

There Are Questions We Could Not Get Past If We Were Not Set Free From Them By Our Very Nature.

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.

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

Work As Joy, Inaccessible To The Psychologists.

I Am Free And That Is Why I Am Lost.

We Need The Books That Affect Us Like A Disaster

What's Happened To Me,' He Thought. It Was No Dream.

Test Yourself On Mankind. It Is Something That Makes The Doubter Doubt, The Believer Believe.

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

Man Cannot Live Without A Continuous Confidence In Something Indestructible Within Himself.

When K. Looked At The Castle, Often It Seemed To Him As If He Were Observing Someone Who Sat Quietly There In Front Of Him Gazing, Not Lost In Thought And So Oblivious Of Everything, But Free And Untroubled, As If He Were Alone With Nobody To Observe Him, And Yet Must Notice That He Was Observed, And All The Same Remained With His Calm Not Even Slightly Disturbed; And Really - One Did Not Know Whether It Was Cause Or Effect - The Gaze Of The Observer Could Not Remain Concentrated There, But Slid Away.

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.

He Who Does Not Answer The Questions Has Passed The Test.

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

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.

So Long As You Have Food In Your Mouth, You Have Solved All Questions For The Time Being.

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