Anybody who preserves the ability to recognize beauty will never get old.

There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.

. . . 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.

Either the world is so tiny or we are enormous; in either case, we fill it completely.

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.

In a certain sense you deny the existence of this world. You explain life as a state of rest, a state of rest in motion.

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