Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashi... — Franz Kafka

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Author: Franz Kafka

Insight: There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from constantly translating yourself for other people. You soften an opinion because it sounds weird, you abandon an interest because it's not trendy, you repackage your actual thoughts into something more digestible. Kafka's insisting that this erosion is the real tragedy—not that you'll fail, but that you'll succeed at becoming acceptable while losing what made you worth anything in the first place. The tricky part is that "follow your obsessions mercilessly" sounds like permission to be difficult or self-indulgent. It's not. Obsession is actually demanding. It requires sustained attention, vulnerability, and the willingness to be wrong repeatedly in public. It's the opposite of self-protection. When you stop editing yourself for fashion, you become more exposed, not less. But you also become real—the kind of person who can actually create something, think something, or contribute something that matters. The sneaky insight here is that everyone around you is probably doing the same editing you are. Following your intense obsessions isn't selfish or weird; it's often the most generous thing you can do, because it's the only way anything authentic gets made. Your specific weirdness is probably what someone else desperately needed to encounter.

Source: Anne Rice, Foreword to The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories, 1995