“All language is but a poor translation.”

The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.

I am in chains. Don’t touch my chains.

I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels.

I need solitude for my writing; not ‘like a hermit’ – that wouldn’t be enough – but like a dead man.

It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves.

There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe, but not for us.

The limited circle is pure.

So eager are our people to obliterate the present.

I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.

It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.’ ‘A melancholy conclusion,’ said K. ‘It turns lying into a universal principle.

Evil is whatever distracts.

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

Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.

Written kisses don’t reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.

I feel it is unnatural and immoral to try to teach science to children in a foreign language They will know facts, but they will miss the spirit.

Books are mute as far as sound is concerned. It follows that reading aloud is a combination of two distinct operations, of two ‘languages.’ It is something far more complex than speaking and reading taken separately by themselves.

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

I liked different etymologies, different slang that came out in different eras. Different languages. Different dialects.

We must teach science in the mother tongue. Otherwise, science will become a highbrow activity.

The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!

The development of language is part of the development of the personality, for words are the natural means of expressing thoughts and establishing understanding between people.