‘We others, we, indeed, are held in our past and future

‘We others, we, indeed, are held in our past and future. We pass almost all our leisure and how much of our work in letting them bob up and down in the balance. Whatever advantage the future has in size, the past compensates for in weight, and at their end the two are indeed no longer distinguishable, earliest youth later becomes distinct, as the future is, and the end of the future is really already experienced in all our sighs, and thus becomes the past.

Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka: 1910-1923