From Kafka’s diary

I was wise, if you like, because I was prepared for death at any moment, but not because I had taken care of everything that was given to me to do, rather because I had done none of it and could not even hope ever to do any of it.

*

Only not to overestimate what I have written, for in that way I make what is to be written unattainable.

— Kafka, Diaries (1912), tr. J Kresh