“The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”

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

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.

In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.

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.

All language is but a poor translation.

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.