“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”

I am always trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.

I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more

The meaning of life is that it stops.

Forget everything. Open the windows. Clear the room. The wind blows through it. You see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don’t find yourself.

In man’s struggle against the world, bet on the world.

They’re talking about things of which they don’t have the slightest understanding, anyway. It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves.

What am I doing here in this endless winter?

I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.

First impressions are always unreliable.

I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.

Books are a narcotic.

All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart; imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state.

Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words.

She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward, to be in closer to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men.

Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that’s going aswamp in its own sludge.

We had avoided discovery by the Sioux scouts, and we were confident of giving them a complete surprise.

There are two things which a man should scrupulously avoid: giving advice that he would not follow, and asking advice when he is determined to pursue his own opinion.

The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.

Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business.

We had avoided discovery by the Sioux scouts, and we were confident of giving them a complete surprise.

Feeling peaceful, happy and content is not about avoiding challenges in our life, but about how we navigate through these challenges to reach the type of life we want to live.