When you want to understand something you stand in front of it, alone, without help: all the past is of no use. Then it disappears and what you wanted to understand disappears with it.

— Sartre, nausea

“There’s no fixed exchange with the Castle, no central exchange which transmits our calls further. When anybody calls up the Castle from here the instruments in all the subordinate departments ring, or rather they would ring if practically all the departments – I know this for a certainty – didn’t leave their receivers off. Now and then, however, a fatigued official may feel the need of a little distraction, especially in the evenings and at night and may hang the receiver on. Then we get an answer, but of course an answer that’s a practical joke. And that’s very understandable too. For who would take the responsibility of interrupting, in the middle of the night, the extremely important work that goes on furiously the whole time, with a message about his own private troubles? I can’t comprehend how even a stranger can imagine that when he calls up Sordini, for example, it’s Sordini that answers.”

— Franz Kafka, Das Schloss

Detective: Don’t you ever wonder about anything?
Jack: The wonder was in my heart. But you wouldn’t understand something like that.

— David Lynch, What Did Jack Do?