"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."
"Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me."
"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back."
"Books are a narcotic."
"A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity."[Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922]"
"We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes."