"My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted."

"It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable."

"The limited circle is pure."

"April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never."

"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."

"Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire."

"I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more"

"I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity."

"Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light."

"They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves."

"People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'."

"Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made."

"There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness."

"Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."

"You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart; imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state."

"It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle."

"Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment."

"Evil is whatever distracts."

"So eager are our people to obliterate the present."

"Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live."

"The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write."

"Please — consider me a dream."

"Yours (now I'm even losing my name - it was getting shorter and shorter all the time and is now: Yours)"

"You can choose to be free , but it's last decision you'll ever make"

"I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things."

"Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss."

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

"I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require an expenditure of so much strength."

"Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy."

"No," said the priest, "you don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary." "Depressing view," said K. "The lie made into the rule of the world."

"I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe."

"What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself."

"He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone."

"Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night."

"I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it."

"But sleep? On a night like this? What an idea! Just think of how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm."

"Writing is prayer."

"What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness."

"I lack nothing. I only needed myself."

"Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested."

"If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?"

"Sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man the most guilty."

"Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words."

"The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other."

"What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense."

"It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet i have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so."

"All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog."

"So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom."