I lack nothing. I only needed myself.
I like to make use of what I know.
It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves.
Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.
Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery.
It’s impossible to defend oneself in the absence of goodwill.
A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us.
We need the books that affect us like a disaster.
What am I doing here in this endless winter?
I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.
April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone – never.
In a way, I was safe writing.
My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it.
But questions that don’t answer themselves at the very moment of their asking are never answered.
The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. Only after death, only in solitude, does a man’s true nature emerge. In death, as on the chimney sweep’s Saturday night, the soot gets washed from his body.
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
At that point I asked myself: How is it that she is not amazed at herself, that she keeps her lips closed and makes no such remark?
That’s how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one’s hand.
They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives...
He is a free and secure citizen of the world because he is on a chain that is long enough to allow him access to all parts of the earth, and yet not so long that he could be swept over the edge of it.