He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived. - Franz Kafka

"Books are a narcotic."

"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."

"Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me."

"Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith."

"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."