The Literary Chick

“Surveyor, in your thoughts you may be reproaching Sordini for not having been prompted by my claim to make inquiries about the matter in other departments. But that would have been wrong, and I want this man cleared of all blame in your thoughts. One of the operating principles of authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account. This principle is justified by the excellence of the entire organization and is also necessary if matters are to be discharged with the utmost rapidity. So Sordini couldn’t inquire in other departments, besides those departments wouldn’t have answered, since they would have noticed right away that he was investigating the possibility of an error.”
“Chairman, allow me to interrupt you with a question,” said K., “didn’t you mention a control agency? As you describe it, the organization is such that the very thought that the control agency might fail to materialize is enough to make one ill.”
“You’re very severe,” said the chairman, “but multiply your severity by a thousand and it will still be as nothing compared with the severity that the authorities show toward themselves. Only a total stranger could ask such a question. Are there control agencies? There are only control agencies. Of course they aren’t meant to find errors, in the vulgar sense of that term, since no errors occur, and even if an error does occur, as in your case, who can finally say that it is an error.”
― Franz Kafka, The Castle

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”
― Maya Angelou, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes: An Autobiography

“the longing for wisdom itself is wisdom' - 'search for a fixed point within yourself, my child, that the world cannot reach' - regard everything that happens as a lifeless painting and do not let yourself be touched by it,”
― Gustav Meyrink, The Dedalus / Ariadne Book of Austrian Fantasy: The Meyrink Years, 1890-1930

“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”
― Lewis Carroll