Read.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need 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 within us. That is my belief.

Franz Kafka

He's wrong, but read anyway.  Just read.

Splendor.

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

Franz Kafka

If.

I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say: “Come with me, Milena. We are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.” Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don’t have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much.

Franz Kafka

Amplified.

Grimshaw, A Moonlit Walk, 1873

The SUDDEN WALK

In the evening, when you seem to have definitely resolved to stay home, have put on your housecoat, are sitting at a lighted table after dinner and have undertaken some type of worker game, after the completion of which you usually go to sleep; when there is unfriendly weather outside which makes staying home a foregone conclusion; when you have already been sitting at the table so long that to go out would cause general astonishment; when additionally the stairwell is dark and the front door locked; and when despite all this you stand up in a moment of sudden discomfort, change your coat, immediately appear dressed for the street, explain that you must go out, and after a short goodbye, actually do it, believing, depending on the haste with which you slam the apartment door, to have left more or less anger behind you; when you find yourself on the street again, with limbs that respond with special mobility to the unexpected freedom you have obtained for them; when through this one decision you feel all ability to decide gathered in you; when you recognize with greater than accustomed significance that you have more power than you need to bring about the most rapid change easily and to bear it; and when you walk into the long streets this way — then you have completely stepped out of your family for the evening, and they dissolve into non-existence, while you yourself, thoroughly strong, outlined in black, slapping the back of your thigh, raise yourself to your true form.

Everything is amplified even further when you visit a friend at this time of night to see how he is doing.

Franz Kafka

Freely.

You do not have to leave the room. Remain standing at your table and listen.

Do not even listen, simply wait.

Do not even wait. Be quite still and solitary.

The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.

It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Franz Kafka

Passionately.

Pietersz, Still Life with Apple Blossom, 1689

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

Franz Kafka

Passed.

Leonardo, Archer, 1485

He who does not answer the questions has passed the test.

Franz Kafka