[Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job . . . into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen.

But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today's world, just as it is, contains the sum of the utility of all people of all times. Which implies: The highest morality consists in being useless.

In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.

No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.

And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?

Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death.

The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.