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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.

-Franz Kafka

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Two Tasks At The

Franz Kafka

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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.

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First Impressions Are Always Unreliable.

First Impression

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

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

The Limited Circle Is Pure.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Slept, Awoke, Slept, Awoke, Miserable Life.

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

There Are Two Cardinal Human Sins Out Of Which All Others Derive, Deviate, And Dissipate: Impatience And Lassitude (or Perhaps Nonchalance). On Account Of Impatience They Are Driven Out Of Paradise; On Account Of Lassitude Or Nonchalance They Do Not Return. Perhaps, However, Only One Main Sense Of Sin Is Given: Impatience. On Account Of Impatience They Are Driven Out, On Account Of Impatience They Do Not Turn Back.

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.

Nothing Is As Deceptive As A Photograph.

From A Real Antagonist One Gains Boundless Courage.

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.

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 Am Constantly Trying To Communicate Something Incommunicable, To Explain Something Inexplicable, To Tell About Something I Only Feel In My Bones And Which Can Only Be Experienced In Those Bones. Basically It Is Nothing Other Than This Fear We Have So Often Talked About, But Fear Spread To Everything, Fear Of The Greatest As Of The Smallest, Fear, Paralyzing Fear Of Pronouncing A Word, Although This Fear May Not Only Be Fear But Also A Longing For Something Greater Than All That Is Fearful.

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.

Writing Sustains Me. But Wouldn’t It Be Better To Say It Sustains This Kind Of Life? Which Doesn't Mean Life Is Any Better When I Don’t Write. On The Contrary, It Is Far Worse, Wholly Unbearable, And Inevitably Ends In Madness. This Is, Of Course, Only On The Assumption That I Am A Writer Even When I Don’t Write - Which Is Indeed The Case; And A Non-writing Writer Is, In Fact, A Monster Courting Insanity.

Leopards Break Into The Temple And Drink All The Sacrificial Vessels Dry; It Keeps Happening; In The End, It Can Be Calculated In Advance And Is Incorporated Into The Ritual.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Beyond A Certain Point There Is No Return. This Point Has To Be Reached.

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

As Far As I Have Seen, At School...they Aimed At Blotting Out One's Individuality.

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

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

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.

I Carry The Bars Within Me.

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

Writer Speaks A Stench.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

For Words Are Magical Formulae. They Leave Finger Marks Be Hind On The Brain, Which In The Twinkling Of An Eye Become The Footprints Of History. One Ought To Watch One' S Every Word.

In A Certain Sense The Good Is Comfortless.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Hiding Places There Are Innumerable, Escape Is Only One, But Possibilities Of Escape, Again, Are As Many As Hiding Places.

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 Am More Uncertain Than I Ever Was; I Feel Only The Power Of Life. And I Am Senselessly Empty.

Only The Moment Counts. It Determines Life.

So Eager Are Our People To Obliterate The Present.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

From Outside One Will Always Triumphantly Impress Theories Upon The World And Then Fall Straight Into The Ditch One Has Dug, But Only From Inside Will One Keep Oneself And The World Quiet And True.

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

And In That Recurring Dream, I Found Myself Trapped In Some Sort Of Gigantic Game Of Which I Was Unfamiliar With The Rules; Lost In A Labyrinthine Town Of Dark And Damp, Criss-crossing Streets, Ambiguous Characters Of Uncertain Authority Having No Idea Of Why I Was There Nor What I Had To Do, And Where The First Sign Of The Beginning Of Understanding Was The Wish To Die.

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

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

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.

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

The Notion Of The Infinite Expanse And Copiousness Of The Cosmos Is The Result Of The Mixture, Carried To The Extreme Limit, Of Laborious Creation And Free Self-determination.

No One Can Crave What Truly Harms Him.

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

I Am Free And That Is Why I Am Lost.

Start With What Is Right Rather Than What Is Acceptable.

Dread Of Night. Dread Of Not-night.

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

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

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.

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.

Kill Me, Or You Are A Murderer.

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

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

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

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

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

Inspirational Birthday

There Has Never Been A Time In Which I Have Been Convinced From Within Myself That I Am Alive. 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. I Have A Constant Longing, My Dear Sir, To Catch A Glimpse Of Things As They May Have Been Before They Show Themselves To Me.

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?

Anyone Who Cannot Come To Terms With His Life While He Is Alive Needs One Hand To Ward Off A Little His Despair Over His Fate... But With His Other Hand He Can Note Down What He Sees Among The Ruins.

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

Anyone Who Believes Cannot Experience Miracles. By Day One Does Not See Any Stars. Anyone Who Does Miracles Says: I Cannot Let Goof The Earth.

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

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

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

The Whole Visible World Is Perhaps Nothing More Than The Rationalization Of A Man Who Wants To Find Peace For A Moment.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I Think We Ought To Read Only The Kind Of Books That Wound And Stab Us.

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 The Fight Between You And The World, Back The World.

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

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.

All I Am Is Literature, And I Am Not Able Or Willing To Be Anything Else.

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.

Association With Human Beings Lures One Into Self-observation.

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

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

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.

Religions Get Lost As People Do.

To Every Instant There Is A Correspondence In Something Outside Time. This World Here And Now Cannot Be Followed By A Beyond, For The Beyond Is Eternal, Hence It Cannot Be In Temporal Contact With This World Here And Now.

Don Quixote's Misfortune Is Not His Imagination, But Sancho Panza.

All Knowledge, The Totality Of All Questions And All Answers, Is Contained In The Dog. If One Could But Realize This Knowledge, If One Could But Bring It Into The Light Of Day, If We Dogs Would But Own That We Know Infinitely More Than We Admit To Ourselves!

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

Ignorance Is Bliss

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

German Is My Mother Tongue And As Such More Natural To Me, But I Consider Czech Much More Affectionate, Which Is Why Your Letter Removes Several Uncertainties; I See You More Clearly, The Movements Of Your Body, Your Hands, So Quick, So Resolute, It’s Almost Like A Meeting.

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

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

Isolation Is A Way To Know Ourselves.

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.

There They Lay, But Not In The Forgetfulness Of The Previous Night. She Was Seeking And He Was Seeking, They Raged And Contorted Their Faces And Bored Their Heads Into Each Others Bosom In The Urgency Of Seeking Something, And Their Embraces And Their Tossing Limbs Did Not Avail To Make Them Forget, But Only Reminded Them Of What They Sought

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

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

Writing Means Revealing Oneself To Excess.

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.

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

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

I Am A Cage, In Search Of A Bird.

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?

I Never Wish To Be Easily Defined. I’d Rather Float Over Other People’s Minds As Something Strictly Fluid And Non-perceivable; More Like A Transparent, Paradoxically Iridescent Creature Rather Than An Actual Person.

We Need The Books That Affect Us Like A Disaster

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

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

Disaster Preparedness

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.

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

Paths Are Made By Walking

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

May I Kiss You Then? On This Miserable Paper? I Might As Well Open The Window And Kiss The Night Air.

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

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

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.

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

Atlas Was Permitted The Opinion That He Was At Liberty, If He Wished, To Drop The Earth And Creep Away; But This Opinion Was All That He Was Permitted.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

You Are At Once Both The Quiet And The Confusion Of My Heart.

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 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.

People Who Walk Across Dark Bridges, Past Saints, With Dim, Small Lights. Clouds Which Move Across Gray Skies Past Churches With Towers Darkened In The Dusk. One Who Leans Against Granite Railing Gazing Into The Evening Waters, His Hands Resting On Old Stones.

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.

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 History Of Mankind Is The Instant Between Two Strides Taken By A Traveler.

A Non-writing Writer Is A Monster Courting Insanity.

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

No Sooner Said Than Done - So Acts Your Man Of Worth.

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.

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

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.

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

To Animalise Is Humane, To Humanise Is Animal.

The Bible Is A Sanctum; The World, Sputum.

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

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.

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.

You Can Hold Yourself Back From The Sufferings Of The World, That Is Something You Are Free To Do And It Accords With Your Nature, But Perhaps This Very Holding Back Is The One Suffering You Could Avoid.

World Suffering

Evil Is The Starry Sky Of The Good.

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

The Fathers Of The Church Were Not Afraid To Go Out Into The Desert Because They Had A Richness In Their Hearts. But We, With Richness All Around Us, Are Afraid, Because The Desert Is In Our Hearts.

"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.

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

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

There Are Only Two Things. Truth And Lies. Truth Is Indivisible, Hence It Cannot Recognize Itself; Anyone Who Wants To Recognize It Has To Be A Lie.

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

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

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

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

There Is A Down-and-outness Under True Knowledge And A Childlike Happy Arising From It.

I Do Not See The World At All; I Invent 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 Old Incapacity. Interrupted My Writing For Barely Ten Days And Already Cast Out. Once Again Prodigious Efforts Stand Before Me. You Have To Dive Down, As It Were, And Sink More Rapidly Than That Which Sinks In Advance Of You.

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

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