Franz Kafka

His two brothers died as infants in the late 1880s and his three sisters were murdered in the Holocaust.

He died of tuberculosis which had moved up to his larynx and robbed him of the ability to speak in his last days.

He dreamed of emigrating to Palestine and becoming an artisan/carpenter; later, he contemplated moving to Tel Aviv and opening up a Jewish restaurant with his friend Dora Diamant where she would cook and he would serve as the waiter.

Worked at an Insurance company.

Considered one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.

None of his work was published in his lifetime and was only found after his death.

Instructed his friend Max Brod to burn all his work after his death. Max Brod decided to publish it instead.

Kafka has described the US Statue of Liberty as holding a sword, when it is in fact a torch.

Women are traps which lie in wait for men everywhere, in order to drag,them down into the Finite.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

"this is the sort of person sitting in,judgment over me. ",[Trial] How are we to avoid those in office becoming deeply corrupt when,everything is devoid of meaning?,[Trial] People under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at,rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being,weighed together with their sins.

[The Country Doctor] "Do you know," I hear someone saying in my ear, "my,confidence in you is very small. You were shaken out from somewhere.

A writer who does not write is a monster courting insanity.

[Trial] Someone must have been telling stories about Joseph K, because,one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.

Evil is whatever distracts.

All revolutions evaporate leaving only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

The Meaning of Life is that it stops.

What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense. . .

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive, needs,one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate. . . But with his,other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

Love is a drama of contradictions.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.

All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.

But I’m not guilty,” said K. “there’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other. ” “That is true” said the priest “but that is how the guilty speak,I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require an expenditure of so much strength.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back.

The hardest bones, containing the richest marrow, can be conquered only by a united crushing of all the teeth of all dogs. That of course is only a figure of speech and exaggerated; if all teeth were but ready they would not need even to bite, the bones would crack themselves and the marrow would be freely accessible to the feeblest of dogs. If I remain faithful to this metaphor, then the goal of my aims, my questions, my inquiries, appears monstrous, it is true. For I want to compel all dogs thus to assemble together, I want the bones to crack open under the pressure of their collective preparedness, and then I want to dismiss them to the ordinary life they love, while all by myself, quite alone, I lap up the marrow. That sounds monstrous, almost as if I wanted to feed on the marrow, not merely of bone, but of the whole canine race itself. But it is only a metaphor. The marrow that I am discussing here is no food; on the contrary, it is a poison.

The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.

The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one willl only in time come to hate. In this there is also a residue of belief that during the move the master will chance to come along the corridor, look at the prisoner and say: "This man is not to be locked up again, He is to come with me.

Kill me, or you are a murderer.

Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.

In a way, I was safe writing,One of the first signs of the beginnings of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one will only in time come to hate.

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. ", July 5, 1922],Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.

We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.

Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.

Writer speaks a stench.

Writing is prayer.

What is written is merely the dregs of experience.

Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

Books are a narcotic.

We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?,The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.

I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.

I only fear danger where I want to fear it.

In general I lacked principally the ability to provide even in the slightest detail for the real future. I thought only of things in the present and their present condition, not because of thoroughness or any special, strong interest, but rather, to the extent that weakness in thinking was not the cause, because of sorrow and fear – sorrow, because the present was so sad for me that I thought I could not leave it before it resolved itself into happiness; fear, because, like my fear of the slightest action in the present, I also considered myself, in view of my contemptible, childish appearance, unworthy of forming a serious, responsible opinion of the great, manly future which usually seemed so impossible to me that every short step forward appeared to me to be counterfeit and the next step unattainable.

I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.

So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.

Most men are not wicked. . . They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

The observer of the soul cannot penetrate into the soul, but there doubtless is a margin where he comes into contact with it.

my heart no longer beats but is a tugging muscle,Concerning this a man once said:Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parablesyou yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares. Another said: I bet that is also a parable. The first said: You have won. The second said: But unfortunately only in parable. The first said: No, in reality; in parable you have lost.

The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.

The limited circle is pure.

However, Gregor had become much calmer. All right, people did not understand his words any more, although they seemed clear enough to him, clearer than previously, perhaps because had gotten used to them,Shoulder to shoulder, a coordinated movement of the people, their blood no longer confined in the limited circulation of the body but rolling sweetly and yet still returning through the infinite extent of China.

My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature. Since I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else, my job will never take possession of me, it may, however, shatter me completely, and this is by no means a remote possibility.

It is as if I were made of stone, as if I were my own tombstone, there is no loophole for doubt or for faith, for love or repugnance, for courage or anxiety, in particular or in general, only a vague hope lives on, but no better than the inscriptions on tombstones.

At the same time all the houses round about promptly took part in this silence, and so did the darkness above them, reaching as far as the stars. And the footsteps of invisible passers-by, whose course I had no wish to guess at, the wind that kept on driving against the other side of the street, the gramophone singing behind closed windows in some room - they made themselves heard in this silence, as if they had owned it for ever and ever.

So if you find nothing in the corridors open the doors, and if you find nothing behind these doors there are more floors, and if you find nothing up there, don’t worry, just leap up another flight of stairs. As long as you don’t stop climbing, the stairs won’t end, under your climbing feet they will go on growing upwards,My health is only just good enough for myself alone, not good enough for marriage, let alone fatherhood. Yet when I read your letter, I feel I could overlook even what cannot possibly be overlooked.

Please — consider me a dream.

I have no memory for things I have learned, nor things I have read, nor things experienced or heard, neither for people nor events; I feel that I have experienced nothing, learned nothing, that I actually know less than the average schoolboy, and that what I do know is superficial, and that every second question is beyond me. I am incapable of thinking deliberately; my thoughts run into a wall. I can grasp the essence of things in isolation, but I am quite incapable of coherent, unbroken thinking. I can’t even tell a story properly; in fact, I can scarcely talk.

[He] used to be so insignificant that one literally felt alone in his presence.

[He] used to be soinsignificant that one literally felt alone in his presence.

Human nature, essentially changeable, unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it renders everything asunder, the wall, and the bonds and its very self.

It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.

It puzzled K.

I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.

During last night’s insomnia, as these thoughts came and went between my aching temples, I realised once again, what I had almost forgotten in this recent period of relative calm, that I tread a terribly tenuous, indeed almost non-existent soil spread over a pit full of shadows, whence the powers of darkness emerge at will to destroy my life…,A non-writing writer is a monster courting insa,Evil is the starry sky of the Good.

Fear of night. Fear of not night.

German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it’s almost like a meeting.

He has the feeling that merely by being alive he is blocking his own way. From this sense of hindrance, in turn, he deduces the proof that he is alive.

sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless manthe most guilty.

One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.

If you have food in your jaws you have solved all questions for the time being.

You misinterpret everything, even the silence.

Did he really want this warm room of his, so comfortably fitted with old family furniture, to be transformed into a cave, in which, no doubt, he would be free to crawl about unimpeded in all directions, but only at the price of rapidly and completely forgetting his human past at the same time?,It is only because of their stupidity that they are able to be so sure of themselves.

Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment.

The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not.

What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.

The existence of the writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obviously taken flight from the real ego, but not improved itself, only become a writer.

But all remains unchanged.

You have given me a gift such as I never even dreamt of finding in this life.

In our folk nobody has any experience of youth, there’s barely even any time for being a toddler. The children simply don’t have any time in which they might be children. . . . . . . . Indeed. . . there’s simply no way that we would be able to provide our children with a viable childhood, one that is real. Naturally, there are consequences. There’s a certain ever present, not to be liquidated childishness that permeates our folk; We often act in ways that are totally and utterly ridiculous and, indeed, precisely like children we do things that are crazy, letting loose with our assets in a manner that is bereft of all rationality, prodigious in our celebrations, partaking in a light-headed frivolousness that is divorced from all sensibility, and often enough all simply for the sake of some small token of fun, so much do we love having our small amusements. But our folk isn’t only childish, to a certain extent we also age prematurely, childhood and old age mix themselves differently with us than by others. We don’t have any youth, we jump right away into maturity and, then, we remain grown-ups for too long and as a consequence to this there’s a broad shadow of a certain tiredness and a sort of hopelessness that colours our essential nature, a nature that as a whole is otherwise so tenacious and permeated by hope, strong hope. This, no doubt, this is related to why we’re so disinclined toward music—we’re too old for music, so much excitement, so much passion doesn’t sit well with our heaviness;,Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

I look a girl in the eye and it was a very long love story with thunder and kisses and lightning. I live fast.

Life is hard, the earth stubborn, science rich in knowledge but poor in practical results.

Isolation is a way to know ourselves.

You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind-- for everyone wants to live as long as he is alive-- even the degree of self-revelation and surrender is not enough for writing. Writing that springs from the surface of existence-- when there is no other way and deeper wells have dried up-- is nothing, and collapses the moment a truer emotion makes the surface shake. That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.

All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.

People who walk across dark bridges, past saints,with dim, small lights. Clouds which move across gray skiespast churcheswith towers darkened in the dusk. One who leans against granite railinggazing into the evening waters,His hands resting on old stones.

If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive.

Could K. represent the congregation all by himself? What if he had been a stranger merely visiting the church? That was more or less his position.

Incidentally, it’s easy to write prescriptions, but difficult to come to an understanding with people.

One hears a great many things, true, but can gather nothing definite.

Guilt is never to be doubted.

All right then, I’ll be mad at you on this score, which incidentally is no great misfortune, as things balance out quite well if there’s a little anger for you lurking in one corner of my heart.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune,that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide,lost in a forest remote from all human habitation,Am I to leave this world as a man who shies away from all conclusions?,Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

Since there was nothing at all I was certain of, since I needed to be provided at every instant with a new confirmation of my existence, since nothing was in my very own, undoubted, sole possession, determined unequivocally only by me — in sober truth a disinherited son — naturally I became unsure even of the thing nearest to me, my own body.

I am so miserable, there are so many questions, I can see no way out and am so wretched and feeble that I could lie forever on the sofa and keep opening and closing my eyes without knowing the difference.

Intrusive, thoughtless people!" said K. as he turned back into the room. The supervisor may have agreed with him, at least K. thought that was what he saw from the corner of his eye. But it was just as possible that he had not even been listening as he had his hand pressed firmly down on the table and seemed to be comparing the length of his fingers.

Every new discovery is assumed at once into the sum total of knowledge, and with that ceases in a sense to be a discovery; it dissolves into the whole and disappears, and one must have a trained scientific eye even to recognize it after that.

I am a very unhappy human being and you, dearest, simply had to be summoned to create an equilibrium for all this misery.

I believe that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book does not rouse us with a blow then why read it?,I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.

But what now if all the peace, the comfort, the contentment were to come to a horrible end?,Nothing, nothing, the whole long day, nothing.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so. .