"Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self."

"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."

"I am a cage, in search of a bird."

"Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

"I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness."

"I am free and that is why I am lost."

"A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die."

"I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself."

"All language is but a poor translation."

"A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity." [Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922]"

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us."

"Books are a narcotic."

"Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life."

"Paths are made by walking"

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

"I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy."

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

"Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more."

"There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us."

"I am in chains. Don't touch my chains."

"It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves."

"Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself."

"Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have."

"I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness."

"They say ignorance is bliss.... they're wrong"

"I usually solve problems by letting them devour me."

"In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world."

"He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived."

"I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man."

"You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart."

"This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me."

"Love is a drama of contradictions."

"Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached."

"First impressions are always unreliable."

"I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it."

"May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air."

"Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers."

"We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes."

"One, I think it showed that the game was really important, but secondly, how that was handled was maybe the best thing that happened today. It was so darn good. This has been the classiest league in the country since its inception."

"It's always an honor to be ranked high, but whatever is said about you, you take it and then take a realistic look at yourself and who you are. I would look at us and say we've got a chance (to win it all)."

"For me, this is the ultimate honor in coaching,"

"This is going to be a matter of collective responsibility,"

"We got in foul trouble and we had to massage those last four minutes of the first half. A lot of times, I'd let them go back in, but with (how) the pace of the game was going today, we couldn't chance starting the second half with either one of those guys in foul trouble."

"He's their shot blocker. He can erase mistakes."

"He can erase mistakes. Offensively, he's a definite low-post threat. And because of their 3-point shooting, he's usually isolated there one-on-one. And with his length and width, he has a chance to score really well. ... [He's] a low-post presence both offensively and defensively. Every team would love to have that, and they do."

"My parents didn't really understand too much about sport. At that time, we were in a Polish community in the inner city of Chicago, and I was the youngest of a bunch of cousins. Polish families are real big, with cousins and aunts and uncles."

"Throughout my life, my mom has been the person that I've always looked up to."

"I've never seen this here at Duke, where with 13 guys you get [one player] with 40 points. He's off the charts with his focus and commitment. Nobody has had more or done it better here."

"I thought at that time that 1992 would be my ultimate Olympic experience and it was a pretty darn good one, ... I'd like for this to be the ultimate Olympic experience."