Franz Kafka

One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.

There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us.

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

He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.

It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.

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

What an obstacle had suddenly arisen to block K.'s career! And this was the moment when he was supposed to work for the bank? He looked down at his desk. This the time to interview clients and negotiate with them? While his case was unfolding itself, while up in the attics the Court officials were poring over the charge papers, was he to devote his attention to the affairs of the bank? It looked like a kind of torture sanctioned by the Court, arising from his case and concomitant with it.

Even that has its reason; it is often better to be in chains than to be free.

Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.