“It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.”

— Franz Kafka , book The Trial

Source: The Trial (1920), Ch. 1

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Franz Kafka 266

author 1883–1924

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 307

“Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“He'd been mistaken in thinking that if he killed himself the sordid bourgeois world would perish with him.”

Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) Japanese author

"Raisin Bread", quoted in 三島由紀夫短編集: Seven Stories, translated by John Bester (2002), p. 21.

“What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction. What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity. Now even that flickered out.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Mother Night

Mother Night (1961), p. 232

“You didn't kill him. He would have killed you, but you didn't kill him."
"So? He was stupid. If I killed everyone who was stupid, I wouldn't have time to sleep.”

Tamora Pierce In the Hand of the Goddess

Source: In the Hand of the Goddess

“He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

John F. Kelly (1950) American politician and military officer; White House Chief of Staff since July 2017

About Donald Trump, as quoted in "Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency" https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bob-woodwards-new-book-reveals-a-nervous-breakdown-of-trumps-presidency/2018/09/04/b27a389e-ac60-11e8-a8d7-0f63ab8b1370_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f1bf8ed6690c (4 September 2018), by Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, The Washington Post
2010s

“The man, who in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Tel homme qui dans un excès de mélancolie se tue aujourd’hui aimerait à vivre s’il attendait huit jours.
"Cato" http://www.voltaire-integral.com/Html/18/caton.htm (1764)
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)