Diarists

""Don't you want to join us?" I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. "No, I don't," I said."

"I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond."

"The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last day."

"The whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment. An attempt to falsify the actuality of knowledge, to regard knowledge as a goal still to be reached."

"If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything"

"There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us."

"One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom."

"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"

""Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him."

"Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the High Court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one of the men closed round his throat, just as the other drove the knife deep into his heart and turned it twice."

"'...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.In the Cathedral"

"Even that has its reason; it is often better to be in chains than to be free."

"What an obstacle had suddenly arisen to block K.'s career! And this was the moment when he was supposed to work for the bank? He looked down at his desk. This the time to interview clients and negotiate with them? While his case was unfolding itself, while up in the attics the Court officials were poring over the charge papers, was he to devote his attention to the affairs of the bank? It looked like a kind of torture sanctioned by the Court, arising from his case and concomitant with it."

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

"This question of yours, Sir, about my being a house painter — or rather, not a question, you simply made a statement — is typical of the whole character of this trial that is being foisted on me. You may object that it is not a trial at all; you are quite right, for it is only a trial if I recognize it as such. But for the moment I do recognize it, on grounds of compassion, as it were. One can't regard it except with compassion, if one is to regard it at all. I do not say that your procedure is contemptible, but I should like to present that epithet to you for your private consumption."

"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."

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

"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. His landlady's cook, who always brought him his breakfast at eight o'clock, failed to appear on this occasion. That had never happened before."

"He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath."

"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."

"I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself."

""Hey, there’s something falling down in there," said the chief clerk. Gregor tried to suppose to himself that what had happened to him might some day also happen to the chief clerk. There was no denying that anything was possible."

"How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense."

"What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm's time in the morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?"

"Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt."

"Plenty of hope — for God — no end of hope — only not for us."

"The bliss of murder! The relief, the soaring ecstasy from the shedding of another’s blood! Wese, old nightbird, friend, alehouse crony, you are oozing away into the dark earth below the street. Why aren’t you simply a bladder of blood so that I could stamp on you and make you vanish into nothingness? Not all we want comes true, not all the dreams that blossomed have borne fruit, your solid remains lie here, already indifferent to every kick. What’s the good of the dumb question you are asking?"

"Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder verstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. Das glaube ich."

"Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... Someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never."

"it seems that Kafka is even more famous in Prague than President Havel. An entire Kafka industry has blossomed here. He is sold in every store: Kafka shirts, Kafka toys; beer mugs and pots with Kafka's picture. There are Kafka restaurants, cafeterias, theatres. He looks down at us from everywhere. Kafka, the sickly, alienated individualist, the Jew who never completely felt himself to be a citizen of the Jewish, the Czech, or the German worlds, has risen from the dead in the vulgarized form of a sort of Czech rock star."

"The only way Kafka could envisage of creating his in every respect impossible writing possible was to demarcate the area of impossibility by making a language without a particular color, without a local tone, without qualities, as it were."

"One night [at college] a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed, I was so surprised. The first line reads, "As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect...." When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn't know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing short stories."

"And the flowers sing in D minor And the birds fly happily."

"You said you liked my Cobain shirt."

"Too late, He sleeps with angels Too soon, He's always on someone's mind."

"Xzibit easily dispersed like crack cocaine See I lent my shotgun to Kurt Cobain And the motherfucker never brought it back (Ah, that's wack)"

"He rocked the United States by flying all over the country and playing that rock and roll He is a good singer He is my rock star."

"So I watched pay per view and polished my shoes and my gun Was diggin' on Kurt Cobain sing about lithium."

"See the whites of their eyes, white skin, white lies House of Pain white, Everlast, Kurt Cobain white Elvis, simple and plain white, John Wayne white."

"Kurt Cobain reincarnated Sighs and licks his face."

"Disturbed by the fame Just like Kurt Cobain."

"Toward another, he has gone To breathe an air beyond his own."

"There was this boy who played in a rock n' roll band And he wasn't half bad at saving the world She said he could do no right, so he took his life The story is true."

"Hard luck god, he never had a chance, you know. Incurable romantics never do."

"Sometimes I wonder what goes on inside her mind When she said she thought Dave Grohl had died, and Kurt Cobain was still alive."

"Yeah the whole Byrd gang's in here, like Kurt Cobain was here."

"Maybe if I put a bullet in my brain They'd remember me like Kurt Cobain And the parasites on MTV Would wipe their eyes and act like they knew me ."

"Left on the floor Leaving your body When highs are the lows And lows are the way."

"Cobain, can you hear the spheres Singing songs off station to station?"

"He gathered up his loved ones And he brought them all around To say, "Goodbye, nice try.""