I am more uncertain than I ever was; I feel only the power of life. And I am senselessly empty.

Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible, but that alone doesn't make it true.

This perversion of the truth, familiar to the artist though it was, always unnerved him afresh and proved too much for him. What was a consequence of the premature ending of his fast was here presented as the cause of it! To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of nonunderstanding, was impossible.

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

The various forms of despair at the various stations on the road.

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.

It's sometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to encompass so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in one's work here.