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“[L]iving authors have a living connection with their books. With their very existence they fight for or against them. The real independent life of the book begins only after the death of the writer, or, more correctly, some time after his death, for these eager men still go on fighting awhile for their book beyond their death. Then, however, it is alone and can rely only on the strength of its own heartbeat.��

“[A]ll the time I’m trying to convey something unconveyable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell of something which I have in my bones and which can be experienced only in these bones. Fundamentally it’s perhaps nothing but that fear of which we have already talked so often, but fear extended to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest—��

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“You say, Milena, that you don’t understand it. Try to understand it by calling it illness. It’s one of the many manifestations of illness which psychoanalysis believes it has uncovered. I don’t call it illness and I consider the therapeutic part of psychoanalysis to be a hopeless error. All these so-called illnesses, sad as they may appear, are matters of faith,��

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“Yes, torturing is extremely important to me, I’m preoccupied with nothing but being tortured and torturing. �� The stupidity inherent in this (realization of stupidity doesn’t help) I once expressed as follows: “The animal wrenches the whip from the master and whips itself so as to become master, and doesn’t realize…��

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“I’ve spent all afternoon in the streets, wallowing in the Jew-baiting. “Prasivé plemeno”—“filthy rabble�� I heard someone call the Jews the other day. Isn’t it the natural thing to leave the place where one is hated so much? (For this, Zionism or national feeling is not needed.) The heroism which consists of staying on in spite of it all is that of cockroaches…��

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“I’m reading a Chinese book, “bubácká kniha��. I mention it because it’s concerned exclusively with death. A man lies on his death-bed and in the independence given him by the proximity of death, he says: “I’ve spent my life trying to fight lust and to put an end to it.�� Then a pupil mocks his teacher who speaks of nothing but death:��

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“Lonely imperfection has to be endured through every moment, imperfection shared by two does not have to be endured. Hasn’t one got eyes to tear them out and a heart for the same purpose? And yet it isn’t so bad, it’s all an exaggeration and a lie, everything is an exaggeration, only the longing is true, this cannot be exaggerated.��

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“I’m dirty, Milena, infinitely dirty, which is why I make so much fuss about purity. No people sing with such pure voices as those who live in deepest hell; what we take for the song of angels is their song.��

I can’t help wondering what Kafka’s feelings would be on Zionism today. I guess simply being able to understand the question would completely change his life��

“I won’t meddle in the fight between you and Max [Brod, always an active Zionist]. I stand aside, see each one’s point of view, and am safe. You are undoubtedly right in what you say, but now we are changing places.��

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“Once as a very small boy I was given a Sechserl [a ten-Kreuzer piece during the Austro-Hungarian monarchy] and felt a great urge to hand it to an old beggar woman who sat between the Grosse and the Kleine Ring. But the sum seemed to me enormous, a sum which probably never before and been given to a beggar, so I was ashamed in front of the beggar woman to do something so unheard-of…��

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