Extraordinary,' said the Burgomaster, 'extraordinary. And now do you think of staying here in Riva with us?'
Asking questions were the most important thing.
A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.
No sooner is it a little calmer with me than it is almost too calm as though I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy
You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surre...
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 think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.
Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.
All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.
لست أقوى على حمل الدنيا فوق كتفي، ولا أنا أحتمل حتى ثقل معطفي فوقهما
You misinterpret everything, even the silence.
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.
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.
O God, he thought, what a demanding job I’ve chosen! Day in, day out on the road. The stresses of trade are much greater than the work going on at head office, and, in addition to that, I have to deal...
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 i...
Illusions are more common than changes in fortune
If you come to me you will be leaping into the abyss.
I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels.
Everyone has his cross to bear.
I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.
