Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. An... - Franz Kafka

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

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

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

"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."

"I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man."