Nobody reaches through here, least of all with a message from one who is dead. You, however, sit at your window and dream of the message when evening comes.
How badly I even read. And with what malice and weakness I observe myself. Apparently I cannot force my way into the world, but lie quietly, receive, spread out within me what I have received, and then step calmly forth.
Utter despair, impossible to pull myself together; Only when I have become satisfied with my sufferings can I stop.
I am not at peace with myself; I am not always “something,” and if for once I am “something,” I pay for it by “being nothing” for months on end.
He accepted it as a fundamental principle for an accused man to be always forearmed, never to let himself be caught napping, never to let his eyes stray unthinkingly to the right when his judge was looming up on the left – to the right when his judge was looming up on the left – and against that very principle he kept offending again and again.
How are we to avoid those in office becoming deeply corrupt when everything is devoid of meaning?
The relief of giving in to destruction.
Why was Gregor the only one condemned to work in a firm where, at the slightest lapse, someone immediately attracted the greatest suspicion?
It is possible that some people are sorry for me, but I am not aware of it.
Sometimes I’m overcome with such an aversion to human beings that I can barely refrain from retching.
A man doesn’t need to fly to the sun, he need only find a patch of clean earth, and crawl there, and let the sun shine on him.
Lying in my heap of Earth I can naturally dream of all sorts of things, even of an understanding with the beast, though I know well enough that no such thing can happen, and at the moment when we see each other, more, at that at the instant we merely guess at each other’s presence, we shall both blindly bare our claws and teeth, neither of us a second before or after the other, both of us filled with a new and different hunger, even if we should already be gorged to bursting.
I wish I had a strong hand for the sole purpose of thrusting it into this incoherent construction that I am. And yet what I am saying here is not even precisely my opinion, not even precisely my opinion at this moment. When I look into myself I see so much that is obscure and still in flux that I cannot even properly explain or fully accept the dislike I feel for myself.
But what shall I do when instead of a heart this fear is beating in my body?
It’s always questionable to intervene decisively in strange circumstances.
However, even this would not have helped me had I not remembered that I was loved by a girl with a black velvet ribbon around her neck, if not passionately, at least faithfully.
Kafka regarded the end of “The Metamorphosis”- its composition in interrupted by a business trip- as “unreadable.” He also wrote in his diary that he found it”bad,” but of course Kafka relished his failure. Failure is precisely what he expected and resolved to accomplish- and he hid behind it.
My dear parents,” said the sister banging her hand on the table by way of an introduction, “things cannot go on any longer in this way. Maybe if you don’t understand that, well, I do. I will not utter my brother’s name in front of this monster, and thus I say only that we must try to get rid of it. We have tried what is humanly possible to take care of it and to be patient. I believe that no one can criticize us in the slightest.
And there shouldn’t be anything to stop you carrying on with your usual life.
Could K. represent the congregation all by himself? What if he had been a stranger merely visiting the church? That was more or less his position.