“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”
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Franz Kafka 266
author 1883–1924Related quotes
Variant: What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours—that is what you must be able to attain.
Source: Letters to a Young Poet
“Methinks adieu
Is cold, when uttered with aught else but tears.”
Canto I, XI
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)
“Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company.”
“That is why I write - to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance.”
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
“If you can't write a decent short story because of the cold, write something else. Write anything.”
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), A Cold Day
Context: If you can't write a decent short story because of the cold, write something else. Write anything. Write a long letter to somebody.
National Book Award Acceptance Speech (1957)
Context: It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; that constitute his ideal audience and his better self. To this congress the poet speaks not of peculiar and personal things, but of what in himself is most common, most anonymous, most fundamental, most true of all men. And he speaks not in private grunts and mutterings but in the public language of the dictionary, of literary tradition, and of the street. Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the products something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.