The ranks of the court hierarchy were endless, and even an initiate could not grasp it in its entirety. Generally, court proceedings were kept secret from minor officials, so they could hardly ever wholly follow the cases they were dealing with as they progressed; court matters came to their notice without their knowing where they came from, and continued without their knowing how or where. So any knowledge that might be gained from studying the separate stages of a trial, the final verdict an ...

Just don't draw attention to yourself! Keep quiet, however much it goes against the grain! Try to understand that this huge legal body is, as it were, forever in a state of balance; by making changes to one's own situation, it is possible to lose one's footing and come to grief, whereas the whole system can easily compensate for such a minor disturbance by making an adjustment elsewhere and so remain unchanged, for everything is interrelated. Indeed, it is more likely that as a res ...

Sometimes the case took a turn in a direction beyond the scope of the advocate. The case, the defendant, and everything else was simply withdrawn from the advocate, and then even his best contacts with officials were of no help, because they knew nothing themselves. The case had simply reached a stage where no more help might be given, it was being dealt with by inaccessible courts, where even the advocate could not reach the defendant. Then one could come home one day and find on one's de ...

There was always some progress, but the exact nature of this progress could never be divulged. Work continued on the first submission, but it was always unfinished; this usually turned out at the next visit to be a great advantage, because these last few days would have been a most unfavorable time to hand it in - something that could not have been foreseen.

I don't deny that it's sometimes possible to achieve something against all the rules and customs; I've never experienced anything of the sort, but there are apparently instances of it, that may be so, but I'm sure it never happens in the way you are doing it.

When a matter has been under review for a very long time, it can happen, even before enquiries are completed, that suddenly, at a quite unexpected stage that cannot be identified afterwards, a decision is reached at lightning speed which settles the whole affair, more often than not quite properly, but still in an arbitrary way. It is as if the administrative apparatus could no longer bear the strain of years of aggravation caused by the same matter, in itself perhaps insignificant, and had ta ...

It occurred to him how the landlady had done her best to make him comply with the report, and how he had stood firm. Her effort had not been straightforward, of course; secretly she had at the same time been deterring him from the report, and in the end it was impossible to say whether he had stood firm or given in. She was scheming by nature, apparently working aimlessly like the wind, following some remote and alien bidding that could never be discerned.

Amalia smiled, and her smile, sad as it was, lit up her sullen, scowling face, made her silence eloquent, her remoteness confiding; it was the revelation of a secret, the surrender of a hitherto guarded possession which, though it might be reclaimed, could never be retrieved entirely.

Long before now he should have been given, well, not a uniform, they don't have these at the Castle, but an official suit; he's been promised one, but at the Castle they're very slow about things like that, and the worst of it is you never know what the delay means. It might mean that the matter is being dealt with officially, but it can also mean they haven't even begun to deal with it, that hey have put him on probation, for example; but it can turn out to mean that they have ...

I've never seen Klamm; but of course they know very well what he looks like in the village, some people have seen him, they've all heard of him, and from these glimpses and rumours, as well as some deliberately misleading reports, a picture of Klamm has emerged that is probably generally accurate. But only generally; otherwise it varies, and perhaps it doesn't even vary as much as Klamm's actual appearance. He is supposed to look quite different when he arrives at the village a ...

Certainly, K. realized that today his weariness had done him more harm than any adverse circumstances; but why could he, who had thought he could rely on his body, and would never have set out along this path unless he had to, why could he not tolerate a few bad nights and one without any sleep, why did he get so uncontrollably tired here of all places, where no one got tired, or rather where everyone was permanently tired without it affecting their work at all, indeed it seemed to help them d ...