From Kafka's Diaries

• Custom, immediately after awakening, to dip the fingers three times in water, as the evil spirits have settled during the night on the second and third joints of the fingers. Rationalist explanation: To prevent the fingers directly touching the face, since, uncontrolled during sleep and dreams, they could after all have touched every possible part of the body, the armpits, the behind, the genitals.
• This craving that I almost always have, when for once I feel my stomach is healthy, to heap up in me notions of terrible deeds of daring with food. I especially satisfy this craving in front of pork butchers. If I see a sausage that is labelled as an old, hard sausage; I bite into it in my imagination with all my teeth and swallow quickly, regularly, and thoughtlessly, like a machine.
• I read the stories of Wilhelm Schafer, especially when aloud, with the same attentive enjoyment that I should get from drawing a piece of twine over my tongue.
• Lowy. My father about him: 'Whoever lies down with dogs gets up with fleas.' I could not contain myself and said something uncontrolled. To which Father with unusual quietness (to be sure, after a long interval which was otherwise occupied): 'You know that I should not get excited and must be treated with consideration. And now you speak to me like that. I really have enough excitement, quite enough. So don't bother me with such talk.' I say: 'I make every effort to restrain myself,' and sense in my father, as always in such extreme moments, the existence of a wisdom of which I can grasp only a breath.