You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.

Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up.

Literature tells very little to those who understand it.

Uncleanness is so much the attribute of officials that one could almost regard them as enormous parasites...In the same way the fathers in Kafka's strange families batten on their sons, lying on top of them like giant parasites. They not only prey upon their strength, but gnaw away at the sons' right to exist. The fathers punish, but they are at the same time the accusers. The sin of which they accuse their sons seems to be a kind of original sin.

Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.

You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.

The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.