Franz Kafka was a German-language novelist and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. This sentence meme is taken from his correspondence with Felice Brauer, with quotes found online from the published collection of letters, Letters to Felice, which can be purchased in ebook and paperback.
Feel free to change things as needed to suit your muses and enjoy! I will be looking over my PDF of Letters to Milena before I publish the second part of this.
I mustn’t look at you too much, or I won’t be able to take my eyes off you at all.
I am not actually tired, but numb and heavy, and can’t find the right words.
All I can say is: Stay with me, don’t leave me.
“I am not actually tired, but numb and heavy, and can’t find the right words. All I can say is: Stay with me, don’t leave me.
There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.
And whether you like it or not, I belong to you.
I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough.
I am jealous of all the people in your letter, those named and those unnamed, men and girls, business people and writers.
When dealing with myself I am powerless.
I am not well; I could have built the Pyramids with the effort it takes me to cling on to life and reason.
You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart; imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state.
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.
Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words.
You will get to know me better; there are still a number of horrible recesses in me that you don’t know.
One has either to take people as they are, or leave them as they are. One cannot change them, one can merely disturb their balance.
A human being, after all, is not made up of single pieces, from which a single piece can be taken out and replaced by something else.
The fact that no one knows where I am is my only happiness.
If only I could prolong this forever! It would be far more just than death.
I am empty and futile in every corner of my being, even in my unhappiness.
No, I didn’t imagine my being alone with you the way you do.
If I want the impossible, I want it in its entirety.
Entirely alone, dearest, I wanted us to be entirely alone on this earth, entirely alone under the sky, and to lead my life, my life that is yours, without distraction and with complete concentration, in you.
But when I want to draw close to someone, and fully commit myself, then my misery is assured. Then I am nothing, and what can I do with nothingness?
I must admit that your letter this morning (by the afternoon it had changed) arrived at just the right moment; I was in need of those very words.
There exists some kind of sorcery by which two people, without seeing each other, without talking to each other, can at least discover the greater part about each other’s past, literally in a flash, without having to tell each other all and everything.
Farewell, and let me reinforce this greeting by lingering over your hand.
I am incapable of thinking deliberately; my thoughts run into a wall. I can grasp the essence of things in isolation, but I am quite incapable of coherent, unbroken thinking.
I can’t even tell a story properly; in fact, I can scarcely talk.
When you pose that question now I can only say: I love you, ___, to the limits of my strength, in this respect you can trust me entirely.
I do not know myself completely. Surprises and disappointments about myself follow each other in endless succession.
What I hope is that these surprises and disappointments will be mine alone; I shall use all my strength to see that none but the pleasant, the pleasantest of surprises of my nature will touch you.
I can vouch for this, but what I cannot vouch for is that I shall always succeed.
If only I had mailed Saturday’s letter, in which I implored you never to write to me again, and in which I gave a similar promise. Oh God, what prevented me from sending that letter?
All would be well. But is a peaceful solution possible now?
Would it help if we wrote to each other only once a week? No, if my suffering could be cured by such means it would not be serious.
And already I foresee that I shan’t be able to endure even the Sunday letters.
If we value our lives, let us abandon it all… I am forever fettered to myself, that’s what I am, and that’s what I must try to live with.
If one bolts the doors and windows against the world, one can from time to time create the semblance and almost the beginning of the reality of a beautiful life.
What a lovely feeling to be in your safekeeping when confronted by this fearful world which I venture to take on only during nights of writing.
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