Franz Kafka Quotes

I mustn't look at you too much, or I won't be able to take my eyes off you at all.

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

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

Illusions are more common than changes in fortune

Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.

Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words.

Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.

The bliss of murder! The relief, the soaring ecstasy from the shedding of another’s blood! Wese, old nightbird, friend, alehouse crony, you are oozing away into the dark earth below the street. Why aren’t you simply a bladder of blood so that I could stamp on you and make you vanish into nothingness? Not all we want comes true, not all the dreams that blossomed have borne fruit, your solid remains lie here, already indifferent to every kick. What’s the good of the dumb question you are asking?

Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.

Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment.

I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels.

I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.

Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.

If this is what you came for, then I didn't send for you.
Kafka (note to himself in journal)

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.