"What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream."

"When the little mouse, which was loved as none other was in the mouse-world, got into a trap one night and with a shrill scream forfeited its life for the sight of the bacon, all the mice in the district, in their holes were overcome by trembling and shaking; with eyes blinking uncontrollably they gazed at each other one by one, while their tails scraped the ground busily and senselessly. Then they came out, hesitantly, pushing one another, all drawn towards the scene of death. There it lay, the dear little mouse, its neck caught in the deadly iron, the little pink legs drawn up, and now stiff the feeble body that would so well have deserved a scrap of bacon.The parents stood beside it and eyed their child's remains."

"We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt."

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

"At the same time all the houses round about promptly took part in this silence, and so did the darkness above them, reaching as far as the stars. And the footsteps of invisible passers-by, whose course I had no wish to guess at, the wind that kept on driving against the other side of the street, the gramophone singing behind closed windows in some room - they made themselves heard in this silence, as if they had owned it for ever and ever."

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

"It puzzled K., at least it puzzled him looking at it from the policemen's point of view, that they had made him go into the room and left him alone there, where he had ten different ways of killing himself. At the same time, though, he asked himself, this time looking at it from his own point of view, what reason he could have to do so. Because those two were sitting there in the next room and had taken his breakfast, perhaps?"

"The observer of the soul cannot penetrate into the soul, but there doubtless is a margin where he comes into contact with it."

"Don't be too hasty, don't take somebody else's opinion without testing it."

"Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before."

"Please - consider me a dream."

"Evil is whatever distracts."

"The limited circle is pure."

"People who walk across dark bridges, past saints,with dim, small lights.Clouds which move across gray skiespast churcheswith towers darkened in the dusk.One who leans against granite railinggazing into the evening waters,His hands resting on old stones."

"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."

"You misinterpret everything, even the silence."

"Human nature, essentially changeable, unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it renders everything asunder, the wall, and the bonds and its very self."

"I only fear danger where I want to fear it."

"In a certain sense the Good is comfortless."

"They no longer wanted to entice anyone, all they wanted was to catch a glimpse for as long as possible of the reflected glory in the great eyes of Odysseus."

"Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins."

"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."

"It occurs to me that I really can't remember your face in any precise detail. Only the way you walked away through the tables in the café, your figure, your dress, that I still see."

"She is so distinct to me, it's as though I had run my hands all over her."

"One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer."

"The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite."

"Life is merely terrible, I feel it as few others do. Often - and in my inmost self perhaps all the time - I doubt whether I am a human being."

"The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man."

"Life is hard, the earth stubborn, science rich in knowledge but poor in practical results."

"The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred."

"Herr Kafka, essen Sie keine Eier." (As one and only piece of dialog K recalls from his meeting with Rudolf Steiner - "Mr. Kafka don't eat eggs."

"I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance."

"Writing is prayer."

"He used to be soinsignificant that one literally felt alone in his presence."

"Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb."

"Let me remind you of the old maxim: people under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins."

"I need solitude for my writing, not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man."

"Association with human beings lures one into self-observation."

"Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence."

"Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one's own self."

"The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler."

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

"My heart no longer beats but is a tugging muscle."

"During last night's insomnia, as these thoughts came and went between my aching temples, I realised once again, what I had almost forgotten in this recent period of relative calm, that I tread a terribly tenuous, indeed almost non-existent soil spread over a pit full of shadows, whence the powers of darkness emerge at will to destroy my life."

"He used to be so insignificant that one literally felt alone in his presence."

"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."

"No sooner is it a little calmer with me than it is almost too calm as though I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy."

"It's impossible to defend oneself in the absence of goodwill."

"Writers speak stench."

"We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes."