“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.”

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.

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.

When I went to jail, reality hit so hard that it took my breath away, took my stance away, took my strength away. I was there buck naked, humiliated, sitting in my own crap and urine – this is a metaphor. My ego had run off. Your ego is the biggest coward.

You can make my chest swell with joy and cave with pain but peace is something I taught myself. Chest swelling chest caving with each new breath of fresh air.

Breathing dreams like air.

When anger rises up I let it breathe. A fire burns out, eventually.

Entangle me, into your talkative eyes. Let me breathe in, your breath often. For I’m tired of floating, in the shallow waters, when I want to get choked.

I would die for you it’s true if I could only learn how to breathe around you.

If I live and breath something, I might as well show everybody what I live and breath.

The Word of God spoke into the dry bones. His breath filled them, put tendons (repair), and put skin on…Then you will know I am God…When Jesus comes that will happen.