Franz Kafka

"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."

"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."

"The meaning of life is that it stops."

"The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies."

"Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue."

"A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity."[Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922]"

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

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

"He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived."

"Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself."