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.
Franz KafkaMy 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.
Franz KafkaEveryone 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 oneโs 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.
Franz Kafka