With the sheer palpability of his work, Franz Kafka has influenced me like no other. The impulses of Kafka have been occasionally morose and occasionally radiant. More than his short stories, it has been his poignant letters to his father and his lover Milena, and those desperate and courageous expressions in his diary, that have lit up my vulnerability and somehow my fantasy too. Because of his blatant display of fallibility and defencelessness, his expressions have appeared to be truthful and almost tangible. He has given me a framework which I believe my writing terribly needed, and I have continued to build on that. 

-