"The Messiah will come only when he is no longer needed; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last."

"All I am is literature, and I am not able to be anything else."

"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 these bones."

"I am thinking of the possibility of writing a book about myself, that is, about this self that has become so difficult and enigmatic to me."

"I am not a Jew, I am not a Christian, I am not a German, I am not a Czech. I am nothing."