"If we start with the first revelation of the Other as a look, we must recognise that we experience our in-apprehensible being-for-others in the form of a possession. I am possessed by the Other; the Other's look fashions my body in its nakedness, causes it to be born, sculptures it, produced it as it is, sees it as I shall never see it. The Other holds a secret - the secret of what I am. "

"I direct my look upon the Other who is looking at me. But a look can not be looked at. As soon as I look in the direction of the look it disappears, and I no longer see anything but eyes."

With you in my heart I can bear everything, and even if I did write that the days without letters were horrifying, it’s not true; they were just horribly difficult—the boat was heavy and it’s draught was horribly deep, but on your tide it floated nonetheless. There’s only one thing I cannot bear without your express help, Milena: the “fear.” I’m much too weak for that, it’s so immense I cannot see beyond it—and this monstrous flood is washing me away.
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I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena