Franz Kafka Quotes

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

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

What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm's time in the morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?

Writing is a deeper sleep than death.
Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave,
I can't be dragged from my desk at night.

There's no quiet place here on earth for our love, not in the village and not anywhere else, so I picture a grave, deep and narrow, in which we embrace as if clamped together, I bury my face against you, you yours against me, and no one will ever see us.

What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.

Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never.

"the blend of absurd, surreal and mundane which gave rise to the adjective "kafkaesque

It seems to be a fact that man, tortured by his demons, avenges himself blindly on his fellow-man.

I feel an unhappiness which almost dismembers me, and at the same time am convinced of its necessity

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it? Good God, we also would be happy if we had no books and such books that make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

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

Writing is prayer.

"Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.

It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary