The castle

It was late evening when K. arrived.

.

Illusions are more common than changes in fortune

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.

all [the authorities] did was to guard the distant and invisible interests of distant and invisible masters

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

The smell of the beer dazed him. ‘What have you done?’ he asked quietly. ‘We’re both lost.’ ‘No,’ said Frieda, ‘I’m the one who’s lost, but I’ve gained you.

K. was left standing in the snow, feeling disinclined to haul his foot 

out of it only to have it sink in again a little further on. The master 

tanner and his friend, happy to be rid of K. at last, made their way 

slowly back through the door of the house, which was only standing 

ajar, still keeping an eye on him. K. was left alone in the all-enveloping 

snow. ‘If I’d come here by chance and not on purpose,’ he thought, 

‘I might fall into despair at this point.’

Franz Kafka

Lend me a hand

"Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins."

--Franz Kafka

"The last time I saw him he was walking down lover's lane holding his own hand." --Fred Allen

"This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves." --Friedrich Nietzsche

"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them."  --Eric Hoffer

"It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards." --Arthur Schopenhauer

Proceed into darkness

“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.” ― Franz Kafka

A Country Doctor

Then I am stripped of my clothes and, with my fingers in my beard and my head tilted to one side, I look at the people quietly. I am completely calm and clear about everything and stay that way, too, although it is not helping me at all, for they are now taking me by the head and feet and dragging me into the bed. 

They lay me against the wall on the side of wound. Then they all go out of the room. 

The door is shut. 

The singing stops.

 Clouds move in front of the moon. 

The bedclothes lie warmly around me. 

In the open space of the windows the horses’ heads sway like shadows. 

“Do you know,” 

I hear someone saying in my ear, 

“my confidence in you is very small. You were only shaken out from somewhere. You don’t come on your own feet. Instead of helping, you give me less room on my deathbed. The best thing would be if I scratch your eyes out.” 

“Right,” I say, 

“it’s a disgrace. But now I’m a doctor. What am I supposed to do? Believe me, things are not easy for me either.” 

“Should I be satisfied with this excuse? Alas, I’ll probably have to be. I always have to make do. I came into the world with a beautiful wound; that was all I was furnished with.”

 “Young friend,” I say, “your mistake is that you have no perspective. I’ve already been in all the sick rooms, far and wide, and I tell you your wound is not so bad. Made in a tight corner with two blows from an axe. Many people offer their side and hardly hear the axe in the forest, to say nothing of the fact that it’s coming closer to them.” 

“Is that really so, or are you deceiving me in my fever?”

“It is truly so. Take the word of honour of a medical doctor.” 

He took my word and grew still. But now it was time to think about my escape. The horses were still standing loyally in their place. Clothes, fur coat, and bag were quickly gathered up. I didn’t want to delay by getting dressed; if the horses rushed as they had on the journey out, I should, in fact, be springing out of that bed into my own, as it were. One horse obediently pulled back from the window. I threw the bundle into the carriage. The fur coat flew too far and was caught on a hook by only one arm. Good enough. I swung myself up onto the horse. The reins dragging loosely, one horse barely harnessed to the other, the carriage swaying behind, last of all the fur coat in the snow. 

“Giddy up,” I said, but there was no giddying up about it. We dragged slowly through the snowy desert like old men; for a long time the fresh but inaccurate singing of the children resounded behind us:

“Enjoy yourselves, you patients.

The doctor’s laid in bed with you.”

Franz Kafka