His biggest misgiving came from his concern about the loud crash that was bound to occur and would probably create, if not terror, at least anxiety behind all the doors. But that would have to be risked.

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

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.

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves; like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

As far as I have seen, at school...they aimed at blotting out one's individuality.

It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.