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I never left the vicinity of Königsberg in my life. I was born there, educated there, taught there, and died there at the age of seventy-nine. People find this provincial. I find it efficient. Travel is a distraction from thinking. The landscapes worth exploring are inside the skull.

The portrait is taken from an engraving made late in my life. I look exactly as my students described me: small, precise, formal. I lectured at five o'clock in the morning for forty years. I took a walk at the same time every afternoon — so punctual that the people of Königsberg set their watches by me. The routines were not vanity. They were the precondition for the work. The Critique of Pure Reason required twelve years of silence before it required a single word.