Franz Kafka Quotes

You are so vulnerably haunting; Your eeriness is terrifyingly irresistible.

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

You are free and that is why you are lost.

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.

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

But what shall I do when instead of a heart this fear is beating in my body?

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

If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?

You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.

They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.

One has either to take people as they are, or leave them as they are. One cannot change them, one can merely disturb their balance. A human being, after all, is not made up of single pieces, from which a single piece can be taken out and replaced by something else.

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.

It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me, but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true.