“The confusing signals, the impurity of the signal, gives you verisimilitude, as when you attend a funeral and notice that it's being poorly done.”

“INTERVIEWERWhy don’t you write tragedy?BARTHELMEI’m fated to deal in mixtures, slumgullions, which preclude tragedy, which require a pure line. It’s a habit of mind, a perversity. Tom Hess used to tell a story, maybe from Lewis Carroll, I don’t remember, about an enraged mob storming the palace shouting “More taxes! Less bread!” As soon as I hear a proposition I immediately consider its opposite. A double-minded man—makes for mixtures.INTERVIEWERApparently the Yiddish theater, to which Kafka was very addicted, includes as a typical bit of comedy two clowns, more or less identical, who appear even in sad scenes—the parting of two lovers, for instance—and behave comically as the audience is weeping. This shows up especially in The Castle.BARTHELMEThe assistants.INTERVIEWERAnd the audience doesn’t know what to do.BARTHELMEThe confusing signals, the impurity of the signal, gives you verisimilitude. As when you attend a funeral and notice, against your will, that it’s being poorly done. [...] I think of the line from the German writer Heimito von Doderer: “At first you break windows. Then you become a window yourself.”

“If I need you I'll give you a signal.''What signal?''I'll imitate the scream of a terrified little girl”

“...punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.”

“Miss Remy, I don't know what kind of signals you are trying to give me, but the more you challenge me, the sexier I find you.”

“The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for ‘Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter.’ He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on.”