Quotes By Letter: K

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”

-Franz Kafka

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“'Because I have to fast, I can't help it,' said the hunger artist. 'What a fellow you are,' said the overseer,'and why can't you help it?' 'Because,'said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and speaking, with his lips pursed, as if for a kiss, right into the overseer's ear, so that no syllable might be lost, 'because I couldn't find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.'”

-A Hunger Artist, Franz Kafka

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“The other day I wrote down the following wish: 'When passing a house, to be pulled in through the ground-floor window by a rope tied around one's neck and to be hauled up, bloody and ragged, through all the ceilings, furniture, walls, and attics, without consideration, as if by a person who is paying no attention, until the empty noose, dropping the last shreds of me when breaking through the roof tiles, appears on the roof.”

-letter, Franz Kafka

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“It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.”

-The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

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“Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing has never happened, still it is conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never.”

-The Silence of the Sirens, Franz Kafka

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“And you have the same power to fascinate him, something a girl’s not supposed to acknowledge, for this particular expression of power makes her, in popular parlance, a prick tease (the more equivalent of, say, scab labor). But being able to capture his focus so completely works on you like a drug, and you’re blighted by the power of it. You can hold his entire being rapt for as long as you care to. You can feel his eyes on you, almost feeding off your form and movements. Even stepping from his car for a movie, you catch him staring at the curve of your calf. Or in the deep cauldron of the theater, he pinches your small wrist as if measuring it, turning it in his hands in a kind of wonder till you feel airy-boned as a bird.”

-Cherry, Mary Karr

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“'But people will have been killed!'

'Oh yes... I daresay that's quite likely. It's really quite difficult to be a murderer without killing people from time to time, you know.'”

-Phantom, Susan Kay

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“Happiness? Is this what it feels like, this surge of warmth and physical euphoria? Oh Christine, if there were a loving God in heaven it would be my arm you take now, my shoulder upon which you lean in your utter exhaustion. ...Beneath the mask my face is wet with tears. Happiness is like the first blissful intoxication of morphine. It doesn't last very long.”

-Phantom, Susan Kay

Recommended by Sibyl.

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“Hell is not a place, it's a state of mind and body. It's an obsession with a voice, a face, a name...”

-Phantom, Susan Kay

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“I am like everyone else! Inside I am like everyone else! Why can't people understand that?”

-Phantom, Susan Kay

Recommended by Sibyl.

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“My mind has touched the farthest horizons of mortal imagination and reaches ever outward to embrace infinity. There is no knowledge beyond my comprehension, no art or skill upon this entire planet that lies beyond the mastery of my hand. And yet, like Faust, I look in vain, I learn in vain... For as long as I live, no woman will ever look on me in love.”

-Phantom, Susan Kay

Recommended by Sibyl.

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“No one in the world needs me...no one ever will....”

-Phantom, Susan Kay

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“Simple words can be reduced to obscenities by my tongue, can they not? Wife... husband... love?”

-Phantom, Susan Kay

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“You'd think that I wouldn't remember... But I recall everything. Everything. I was cursed with these extraordinary powers of recollection...”

-Phantom, Susan Kay

Recommended by Sibyl.

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“A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.”

-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen

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“Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers, or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?”

-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen

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“I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.”

-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen

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“My ambition was to negate. The world, whether dense or hollow, provoked only my negations. When I was supposed to be awake, I was asleep; when I was supposed to speak, I was silent; when a pleasure offered itself to me, I avoided it. My hunger, my thirst, my loneliness and boredom and fear were all weapons aimed at my enemy, the world. They didn't matter a whit to the world, of course, and they tormented me, but I got a gruesome satisfaction from my sufferings. They proved my existence. All my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.”

-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen

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“People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up there as well. I can't answer the real question. All I can say is, it's easy.”

-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen

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“Robert Lowell also didn't come while I was there. Sylvia Plath had come and gone. What is it about meter and cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad?”

-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen

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“Scar tissue has no character. It's not like skin. It doesn't show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It's like a slip cover. It shields and disguises what's beneath. That's why we grow it; we have something to hide.”

-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen

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“Why did she do it? Nobody dared to ask. Because - what courage! Who had the courage to burn herself? Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way.

What was that moment like for her? The moment she lit the match. Had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? Or was it just an inspiration?

I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that today I had to swallow fifty aspirin. It was my task: my job for the day. I lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. But it's not the same as what she did. I could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. And I could have done what I did do, which was go onto the street and faint. Fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer.

She lit the match.”

-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen

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“I remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in a bark of a tree, just as a butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited awhile, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it I tried to help it with my breath. In vain.

It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of its wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.

The little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience, for I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm.”

-Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis

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“We all leave childhood with wounds. In time we may transform our liabilities into gifts. The faults that pockmark the psyche may become the source of a man's or woman's beauty. The injuries we have suffered invite us to assume the most human of all vocations - to heal ourselves and others.”

-Sam Keen

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“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming it.”

-Helen Keller

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