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.

I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.

. . . The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation-a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.

If this is what you came for, then I didn't send for you. Kafka (note to himself in journal)

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

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.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.