“I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.”

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

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.

Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.

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

They say ignorance is bliss, they’re wrong

You can choose to be free , but it’s last decision you’ll ever make

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

I am free and that is why I am lost.

No, said the priest, you don’t need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary. Depressing view, said K. The lie made into the rule of the world.

I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.

For myself I am too heavy, and for you too light.

A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

And the process of reading is such a private one. I once came into a room where a friend of mine was reading one of my books, and he clicked his tongue impatiently and shooed me off.

I read the newspapers with lively interest. It is seldom that they are absolutely, point-blank wrong. That is the popular belief, but those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo of truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl, round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament.

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read.

The Romans had been able to post their laws on boards in public places, confidant that enough literate people existed to read them; far into the Middle Ages, even kings remained illiterate.

Having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to read.

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.