"My grandfather used to say: 'Life is astonishingly short. As I look back over it, life seems so foreshortened to me that I can hardly understand, for instance,

"My grandfather used to say: 'Life is astonishingly short. As I look back over it, life seems so foreshortened to me that I can hardly understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that, quite apart from accidents, even the span of a normal life that passes happily may be totally insufficient for such a ride.'" - Franz Kafka, The Next Village