Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
I am a cage, in search of a bird.
Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
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.
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.
I am free and that is why I am lost.
A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.
I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.
The meaning of life is that it stops.
All language is but a poor translation.
A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity." [Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922]
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.
Books are a narcotic.
Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.
Paths are made by walking
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.
Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.
There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.
I am in chains. Don't touch my chains.
It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.
Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.
Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.
I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.
They say ignorance is bliss.... they're wrong
I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.
He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.
I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.
L'éternité, c'est long ... surtout vers la fin.
You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.
This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.
Love is a drama of contradictions.
Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.
First impressions are always unreliable.
I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.
May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.
Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.
We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.
I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.
Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.
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.
Kill me, or you are a murderer.
Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
What am I doing here in this endless winter?
You are free and that is why you are lost.
God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.
All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.
My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.
The limited circle is pure.
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.
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 speaks he lies.
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.
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
I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.
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.
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.
Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.
People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'.
There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
Evil is whatever distracts.
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.
Sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man the most guilty.
You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart; imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state.
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.
So eager are our people to obliterate the present.
Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.
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.
Please — consider me a dream.
I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.
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Yours (now I'm even losing my name - it was getting shorter and shorter all the time and is now: Yours)
You can choose to be free , but it's last decision you'll ever make
Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.
Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.
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.
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.
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.
What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.
He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.
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.
I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.
Writing is prayer.
But sleep? On a night like this? What an idea! Just think of how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.
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.
I lack nothing. I only needed myself.
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 if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.
Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words.
It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet i have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so.
All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.
So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.
