When I'm crunching across the ice in January, I sometimes think of this quote by Franz Kafka, which is such a passionate understanding of the role of literature:“ . . . the books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation—a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.”
--Franz Kafka
