Franz Kafka Quotes

I’m thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.

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.

There they lay, but not in the forgetfulness of the previous night. She was seeking and he was seeking, they raged and contorted their faces and bored their heads into each others bosom in the urgency of seeking something, and their embraces and their tossing limbs did not avail to make them forget, but only reminded them of what they sought

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.

I’m doing badly, I’m doing well, whichever you prefer.

Forget everything. Open the windows. Clear the room. The wind blows through it. You see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don’t find yourself.

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

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

First impressions are always unreliable.

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. If one could but realize this knowledge, if one could but bring it into the light of day, if we dogs would but own that we know infinitely more than we admit to ourselves!

What an obstacle had suddenly arisen to block K.'s career! And this was the moment when he was supposed to work for the bank? He looked down at his desk. This the time to interview clients and negotiate with them? While his case was unfolding itself, while up in the attics the Court officials were poring over the charge papers, was he to devote his attention to the affairs of the bank? It looked like a kind of torture sanctioned by the Court, arising from his case and concomitant with it.

There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves.

I’m doing badly, I’m doing well; whichever you prefer.

there is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak