Quotes from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“Yours

(now I'm even losing my name - it was getting shorter and shorter all the time and is now: Yours)”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“أنا قذر يا ميلينا، قذر بلا حدود، لذلك أصرخ كثيراً بشأن الطهارة”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“When one is alone, imperfection must be endured every minute of the day; a couple, however, does not have to put up with it. Aren’t our eyes made to be torn out, and our hearts for the same purpose? At the same time it’s really not that bad; that’s an exaggeration and a lie, everything is exaggeration, the only truth is longing. But even the truth of longing is not so much its own truth; it’s really an expression for everything else, which is a lie. This sounds crazy and distorted, but it’s true. Moreover, perhaps it isn’t love when I say you are what I love the most - you are the knife I turn inside myself, this is love. This, my dear, is love.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man
the most guilty.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“Sometimes I have the feeling that we're in one room with two opposite doors and each of us holds the handle of one door, one of us flicks an eyelash and the other is already behind his door, and now the first one has but to utter a word ad immediately the second one has closed his door behind him and can no longer be seen. He's sure to open the door again for it's a room which perhaps one cannot leave. If only the first one were not precisely like the second, if he were calm, if he would only pretend not to look at the other, if he slowly set the room in order as though it were a room like any other; but instead he does exactly the same as the other at his door, sometimes even both are behind the doors and the the beautiful room is empty.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“I’m thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“I am always trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“For myself I am too heavy, and for you too light.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“I’m doing badly, I’m doing well, whichever you prefer.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“I can't think of anything to write about, I'm just walking around here between the lines, under the light of your eyes, in the breadth of your mouth as in a beautiful happy day, which remains beautiful and happy, even when the head is sick and tired.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“it was like this. the brain could no longer bear the worries and pains that were imposed on it. it said: "i'm giving up; but if there is anyone else here who is interested in preserving the whole, let him assume part of my burden and it will be alright for a bit.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“I can’t feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“Nor is it perhaps really love when I say that for me you are the most beloved; In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it’s almost like a meeting.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“It seems to be a fact that man, tortured by his demons, avenges himself blindly on his fellow-man.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“And don't demand any sincerity from me, Milena. No one can demand it from me more than I myself and yet many things elude me, I'm sure, perhaps everything eludes me.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“Milena - what a rich heavy name, almost too full to be lifted, and in the beginning I didn't like it much, it seemed to me a Greek or Roman gone astray in Bohemia, violated by Czech, cheated of its accent, and yet in colour and form it is marvellously a woman, a woman whom one carries in one's arms out of the world, and out of the fire, I don't know which, and she presses herself willingly and trustingly into your arms.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“كتابة الرسائل .. تعني أن تعري نفسكَ أمام الأشباح ، و هو شيء لطالما كانوا ينتظرونه بفارغ الصبر. كتابة القُبل فيها لا يعني أنها ستصل إلى مكانها المقصود ، بينما على العكس ، يتخطفها الأشباح على طول الطريق."

(كافكا إلى ميلينا)”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

“I'm on such a dangerous road, Milena. You're standing firmly near a tree, young, beautiful, your eyes subduing with their radiance the suffering world.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation

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Popular quotes

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“Vespers

Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,
Droops on the little hands little gold head.
Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

God bless Mummy. I know that's right.
Wasn't it fun in the bath tonight?
The cold's so cold, and the hot's so hot.
Oh! God bless Daddy -- I quite forgot.

If I open my fingers a little bit more,
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Oh! God bless Nanny and make her good.

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And pull the hood right over my head,
And I shut my eyes, and I curl up small,
And nobody knows that I'm there at all.

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Oh! Now I remember. God bless Me.

Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed.
Droops on the little hands little gold head.
Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!
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― A.A. Milne, quote from When We Were Very Young

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