I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound a... - Franz Kafka

"Kill me, or you are a murderer."

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

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

"We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."

"Books are a narcotic."