How many words are in books! They’re meant for reminders! As though words were ever reminders!

Because words are poor mountaineers and miners. They do not fetch treasures from the mountain heights and not from the mountain deeps.

But there is a live remembrance which beyond the worth of any reminder gently leads there like a coaxing hand. And if from this ash flame rises, glowing and hot, mighty and strong and you stare within, as spellbound with the magic of it, then—

But in this chaste remembrance, one cannot inscribe oneself with clumsy hand and rude implement, one can do that only in these white, undemanding sheets. That did I on September 4, 1900.

Franz Kafka