From the standpoint of literature my fate is very simple. My feeling for the representation of my dreamlike inner life has made everything else trivial, and these other things have withered horribly and do not stop withering. Nothing else can ever satisfy me. But my strength for that representation cannot be counted on at all, perhaps it has already vanished forever, perhaps it actually will come over me once again, though the circumstances of my life are not favorable to that end. And so I waver, I fly incessantly to the peak of the mountain, but I can barely stay on top for an instant. Others waver as well, but in lower regions, with greater powers; if they risk falling, they are caught up by the kinsman who walks beside them for that purpose. But I waver up there; it is not death, alas, but the eternal torments of dying.

—Franz Kafka, Tagebücher, 546.