tozé

My grandfather used to say: “Life is astonishingly short. Now, in my memory, it is so compressed that I can hardly understand, for example, how a young person can decide to ride to the next village without being afraid that—apart from accidents—even the time allotted to a normal, happy life is far too short for such a journey.

—Franz Kafka, ‘The Next Village’. This is the entire text of the story. It’s really a fragment rescued by his friend Max Brod, but like many of these it’s usually published on its own. As a paragraph in a larger work it could be funny; as a standalone piece it is haunting. (via mrgan)