Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

People keep themselves at a tolerable height above an infernal abyss toward which they gravitate only by putting out all their strength and lovingly helping one another. They are tied together by ropes, and it's bad enough when the ropes around an individual loosen and he drops somewhat lower than the others into empty space; ghastly when the ropes break and he falls. That's why we should cling to the others.

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.

German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it’s almost like a meeting.

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.

Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.

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