"2. Everything immediately starts me thinking. Every joke
in the comic papers, every memory of Flaubert and
Grillparzer, the sight of the nightshirts on my parents'
beds, laid out for the night, Max's marriage. Yesterday
my sister said, "All the married people (that we know)
are happy. I don't understand it," this remark
started me thinking. I became afraid again.
3. I must be alone a great deal. What I accomplished
was only the result of being alone.
4. I hate everything that does not relate to literature,
conversations bore me (even if they relate to literature),
to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my
relatives bore me to the very soul. Conversation takes
the importance, the seriousness, the truth out of everything
I think..."

*I Am I Memory Come Alive: Autobiographical Writings
of Franz Kafka*
edited by Nahum N. Glatzer
Schocken, 1974