“When you stand before me and regard me, what do you know of the pain that is within me, and what do I know of yours. And if I were to throw myself down on the ground before you and weep and tell you stories, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you that it is hot and horrible? For this reason alone, we human beings should stand before one another just as respectfully, contemplatively and lovingly as we would before the gates of Hell.”

[Franz Kafka in a letter to Oskar Pollak, 8 November 1903]