"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."
— Franz Kafka

"A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die."
— Franz Kafka

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

"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."
— Franz Kafka

"All language is but a poor translation."
— Franz Kafka

"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."
— Franz Kafka

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

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
— Franz Kafka (The Metamorphosis)

"Books are a narcotic."
— Franz Kafka

"I am free and that is why I am lost."
— Franz Kafka

"Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more."
— Franz Kafka

"By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired."
— Franz Kafka

"…I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more."
— Franz Kafka (The Castle)

"Paths are made by walking"
— Franz Kafka

"The meaning of life is that it stops."
— Franz Kafka

"I am a cage, in search of a bird."
— Franz Kafka

"Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life."
— Franz Kafka

"Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself."
— Franz Kafka

"Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, write ourselves. 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 away from any human presence, like a suicide.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe."
— Franz Kafka

"In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world."
— Franz Kafka

"Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into."
"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up."
— Franz Kafka

"I am in chains. Don't touch my chains."
— Franz Kafka

"A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity."
— Franz Kafka

"I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy."
— Franz Kafka

"L'éternité, c'est long... surtout vers la fin."
— Franz Kafka

"So eager are our people to obliterate the present."
— Franz Kafka

"The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of a person we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation--a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us."
— Franz Kafka

"Writer speaks a stench."
— Franz Kafka

"The meaning of life is that it ends."
— Franz Kafka

"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."
— Franz Kafka

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

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

"Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made."
— Franz Kafka

"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."
— Franz Kafka

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? 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."
— Franz Kafka

"God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them."
— Franz Kafka

"Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have."
— Franz Kafka

"Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: "Go over," he does not mean that we should cross over to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something too that he cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.

Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid yourself 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."
— Franz Kafka

"My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted."
— Franz Kafka

"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."
— Franz Kafka (Diaries of Franz Kafka 1914-1923)

"Love is a drama of contradictions."
— Franz Kafka

"There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us."
— Franz Kafka

"It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go."
— Franz Kafka

"Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith."
— Franz Kafka

"Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself."
— Franz Kafka

"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."
— Franz Kafka (Diaries of Franz Kafka)

"My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication--it makes them sociable.
I, however, cannot force myself to
use drugs to cheat on my loneliness--it is all that I have--and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well."
— Franz Kafka

"Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached."
— Franz Kafka

"Kill me, or you are a murderer."
— Franz Kafka

"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."
— Franz Kafka