How illuminating

'Kafka interrupted me.

"It is not a cryptogram. Samsa is not merely Kafka, and nothing else. The Metamorphosis is not a confession, although it is- in a certain sense- an indiscretion."

"I know nothing about that."

"Is it perhaps delicate and discreet to talk about the bedbugs in one's own family?"

"It isn't usual in good society."

"You see what bad manners I have."

Kafka smiled. He wished to dismiss the subject. But I did not wish to.

"It seems to me that the distinction between good and bad manners hardly applies here," I said. "The Metamorphosis is a terrible dream, a terrible conception."

Kafka stood still.

"The dream reveals the reality, which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life- the terror of art. But now I must go home."

He took a curt farewell.

Had I driven him away?

I felt ashamed.'

-Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka