Letters to Milena

by Franz Kafka

Anyone who cares about you has to realize that you need a little looking after, nothing else really matters.

I’ve lost my way a little, but that doesn’t matter, because if you’ve accompanied me, then we’re both lost.

I really am a paragon of stupidity.

One ought, Milena, to take your face in both hands and look you square in the eye, so that you would see yourself in the eyes of the other person, then you could not even think the kinds of things you wrote there.