The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, lost in a forest remote from all human habitation.

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Having a trial like that means losing a trial like that (Sufrir un proceso es casi haberlo perdido)

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Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment.

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Do you realize that people don't know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories — and come up with nothing but clichés: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), etc. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.

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He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.

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I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.

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This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern.

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san otkriva stvarnost za kojom predstava zaostaje.strashno potiche od zhivota – potresno od umetnosti.

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sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man the most guilty.

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You wouldn't believe the kind of person I could become if you wanted it.

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