[...] But back I cannot go, this waste of time, this admission of having been on the wrong track would be unbearable for me. What? Run downstairs in this brief, hurried life accompanied as it is by that impatient droning? Impossible. The time allotted to you is so short that if you lose one second you have already lost your whole life, for it is no longer, it is always just as long as the time you lose. [...] As long as you don't stop climbing, the stairs won't end, under your climbing feet they will go on growing upwards.

[...] I talked on as if I had still some prospect of putting everything right again by my talk, by the advantageous offers I made--I was myself alarmed by the concessions I granted, concessions that had not even been asked for. [...]

Then I descended the stairs: The descent was more tiring than the ascent had been, and not even that had been easy. Oh, how many business calls come to nothing, and yet one must keep going.

Albert Camus once said that 'the whole of Kafka's art consists in compelling the reader to re-read him.' Since the interpretations of Kafka are many and the search for the meaning of his stories seemingly endless, the reader will return to the story itself in the hope of finding guidance from within. Thus a second reading will--hopefully--become a commentary on the first, and subsequent readings will--again hopefully--shed light on the preceding ones. [...]