Franz Kafka Quotes

“I sink into your eyes whenever I'm looking at you. and feel your eyes on me whenever I'm walking around the room and all the time I am aware, with a pride I can no longer contain, that I am living for you, that I am allowed to do so ......”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“You once said you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write (I can’t do much, anyway), but in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of selfrevelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind—for everyone wants to live as long as he is alive —even that degree of selfrevelation and surrender is not enough for writing. Writing that springs from the surface of existence— when there is no other way and the deeper wells have dried up—is nothing, and collapses the moment a truer emotion makes that surface shake. This is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough. This is why there is never enough time at one’s disposal, for the roads are long and it is easy to go astray, there are even times when one becomes afraid and has the desire—even without any constraint or enticement—to run back (a desire always severely punished later on), how much more so if one were suddenly to receive a kiss from the most beloved lips! I have often thought that the best mode of life for me would be to sit in the innermost room of a spacious locked cellar with my writing things and a lamp. Food would be brought and always put down far away from my room, outside the cellar’s outermost door. The walk to my food, in my dressing gown, through the vaulted cellars, would be my only exercise. I would then return to my table, eat slowly and with deliberation, then start writing again at once. And how I would write! From what depths I would drag it up! Without effort! For extreme concentration knows no effort. The trouble is that I might not be able to keep it up for long, and at the first failure—which perhaps even in these circumstances could not be avoided—would be bound to end in a grandiose fit of madness.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

“عاجز عن الحياة مع الناس، وعن الحديث معهم، منغمس في ذاتي ولا أفكر إلا بنفسي، متبلد وعاجز عن التفكير وليس عندي ما أقوله لأحد .”
― Franz Kafka

“In the struggle between yourself
and the world, second the world.

(Im Kampf zwischen Dir
und der Welt, sekundiere der Welt)”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“Written kisses never arrive at their destination; the ghosts drink them up along the way.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“I look a girl in the eye and it was a very long love story with thunder and kisses and lightning. I live fast.”
― Franz Kafka

“… my joints ache with fatigue, my dried up body trembles toward its own destruction in turmoils of which I dare not become fully conscious, in my head are astonishing convulsions.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“I was a timid child. For all that, I am sure I was also obstinate, as children are. I am sure that Mother spoiled me too, but I cannot believe I was particularly difficult to manage; I cannot believe that a kindly word, a quiet taking by the hand, a friendly look, could not have got me to do anything that was wanted of me. Now you are, after all, basically a charitable and kindhearted person (what follows will not be in contradiction to this, I am speaking only of the impression you made on the child), but not every child has the endurance and fearlessness to go on searching until it comes to the kindliness that lies beneath the surface. You can treat a child only in the way you yourself are constituted, with vigor, noise, and hot temper, and in this case such behavior seemed to you to be also most appropriate because you wanted to bring me up to be a strong, brave boy.”
― Franz Kafka

“❝ Everything appears to me to be an artificial construction of the mind. Every mark by someone else, every chance look throws everything in me over on the other side, even what has been forgotten, even what is entirely insignificant. I am more uncertain than I ever was; I feel only the power of life. And I am senselessly empty.”
― Franz Kafka

“Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.”
― Franz Kafka

“First of all, I am delighted that you are a vegetarian at heart. I don’t like strict vegetarians all that much, because I too am almost a vegetarian, and see nothing particularly likable about it, just something natural, and those who are good vegetarians in their hearts, but, for reasons of health, from indifference, or simply because they underrate food as such, eat meat or whatever happens to be on the table, casually, with their left hand, so to speak, these are the ones I like.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

“Writing, when it springs from within, is like giving birth, and the child is covered in mucus”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis

“If you sum up your judgment of me, the result you get is that, although you don't charge me with anything downright improper or wicked . . . , you do charge me with coldness, estrangements and ingratitude. And, what is more, you charge me with it in such a way as to make it seem my fault, as though I might have been able, with something like a touch on the steering wheel, to make everything quite different, while you aren't in the slightest to blame, unless it be for having been too good to me.
This, your usual way of representing it, I regard as accurate only in so far as I too believe you are entirely blameless in the matter of our estrangement. But I am equally entirely blameless. If I could get you to acknowledge this, then what would be possible is—not, I think, a new life, we are both much too old for that—but still, a kind of peace . . .”
― Franz Kafka

“About some books we feel that our reluctance to return to them is the true measure of our admiration. It is hard to suppose that many people go back, from a spontaneous desire, to reread 1984: there is neither reason nor need to, no one forgets it. The usual distinctions between forgotten details and a vivid general impression mean nothing here, for the book is written out of one passionate breath, each word is bent to a severe discipline of meaning, everything is stripped to the bareness of terror.

Kafka's The Trial is also a book of terror, but it is a paradigm and to some extent a puzzle, so that one may lose oneself in the rhythm of the paradigm and play with the parts of the puzzle. Kafka's novel persuades us that life is inescapably hazardous and problematic, but the very 'universality' of this idea helps soften its impact: to apprehend the terrible on the plane of metaphysics is to lend it an almost soothing aura.”
― Irving Howe, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources, Criticism

“Der Sinn für die Darstellung meines traumhaften innern Lebens hat alles andere ins Nebensächliche gerückt, und es ist in einer schrecklichen Weise verkümmert und hört nicht auf, zu verkümmern. Nichts anderes kann mich jemals zufriedenstellen. Nun ist aber meine Kraft für jene Darstellung ganz unberechenbar, vielleicht ist sie schon für immer verschwunden, vielleicht kommt sie doch noch einmal über mich, meine Lebensumstände sind ihr allerdings nicht günstig. So schwanke ich also, fliege unaufhörlich zur Spitze des Berges, kann mich aber kaum einen Augenblick oben erhalten. Andere schwanken auch, aber in untern Gegenden, mit stärkeren Kräften; drohen sie zu fallen, so fängt sie der Verwandte auf, der zu diesem Zweck neben ihnen geht. Ich aber schwanke dort oben, es ist leider kein Tod, aber die ewigen Qualen des Sterbens.”
― Franz Kafka, Tagebücher 1910-1923

“Why are those who knew him, when they pass from the memory of a young man, sensitive and gay, to the work – novels and writings – surprised to pass into a nocturnal world, a world of cold torment, a world not without light but in which light blinds at the same time that it illuminates; gives hope, but makes hope the shadow of anguish and despair? Why is it that he who, in his work, passes from the objectivity of the narratives to the intimacy of the Diary, descends into a still darker night in which the cries of a lost man can be heard? Why does it seem that the closer one comes to his heart, the closer one comes to an unconsoled center from which a piercing flash sometimes bursts forth, an excess of pain, excess of joy? Who has the right to speak of Kafka without making this enigma heard, an enigma that speaks with the complexity, with the simplicity, of enigma?”
― Maurice Blanchot, Friendship

“Hayvanların yenmek suretiyle unutuluşundan öte, Kafka'ya göre hayvan bedenleri, unutmak istediğimiz tüm yanlarımızın unutuluşunun da yükünü taşıyordu. Eğer doğamızın bir yanını inkar etmek istersek, bundan hayvani doğamız diye bahsederiz. Bu yanımızı bastırır ya da saklarız ve buna rağmen, Kafka'nın çoğumuzdan daha iyi bildiği üzere, bazen uyandığımızda kendimizi yine de sadece bir hayvan olarak buluruz.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“This back and forth is getting worse all the time. At the office I live up to my outward duties, but not to my inner duties, and those unfulfilled duties grow into a permanent torment.”
― Franz Kafka

“So I only wrote half a page and am once again with you, laying on this letter like I lay next to you back then in the forest.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“İşte bütün bunlar K.’ya kendisiyle bütün bağların koparıldığı, şimdi doğal olarak her zamankinden daha özgür olduğu ve ona başka zaman yasak olan bu yerde istediği kadar bekleyebileceği hissini verdi; sanki özgürlüğünü kimsenin yapamayacağı bir mücadeleyle elde etmişti ve kimse ona dokunamazdı, onu kovamazdı, hatta onunla konuşamazdı bile; ama bu inanç öylesine güçlüydü ki, sanki aynı zamanda bu özgürlükten, bu bekleyişten, bu dokunulmazlıktan daha anlamsız ve çaresiz bir şey yoktu.”
― Franz Kafka

“Like dreams, his texts combine precise "realistic" detail with absurdity, careful observation and reasoning on the part of the protagonists with inexplicable obliviousness and carelessness.”
― Hartmut M. Rastalsky

“Der Sinn für die Darstellung meines traumhaften innern Lebens hat alles andere ins Nebensächliche gerückt, und es ist in einer schrecklichen Weise verkümmert und hört nicht auf, zu verkümmern. Nichts anderes kann mich jemals zufriedenstellen.”
― Franz Kafka, Tagebücher 1910-1923

“Kafka's characters are not more abstract than real people: they are people attached to a job.”
― Günther Anders, Kafka pro und contra: Die Prozess-Unterlagen

“Brutalidad de profesaurios, pecadillos de puñeteros pedagogos, como cuando insisten en comparar trabajo y calidad, como si un soneto de Lorca, cuento de Marcial Suárez, aforismo de Bernardo Soares o relato de media página de Kafka no valiese infinitamente más que cualquier novela suya de cuatrocientas páginas.”
― Alexandre Alphonse, Dry Cicuta

“For healthy people, life is only an unconscious and unavowed flight from the consciousness that one day one must die. Illness is always a warning and a trial of strength. And so illness, pain, [and] suffering are the most important sources of religious feeling.”
― Franz Kafka

“Dünyada benim ihtiyaç duyduğum kadar sabır var mı Milena?”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“El aislamiento es una forma de conocernos a nosotros mismos.”
― Franz Kafka

“Don’t forget Kropotkin!”
― Franz Kafka

“It is a blow because it will take time and I need all the time I have and a thousand times more than all the time I have and most of all I'd like to have all the time there is just for you, for thinking about you, for breathing in you.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“In an enchanting encounter with the myriad books that I met in a cosy book shop today, I couldn't help but get bedazzled with the cornucopia of stories and poetry that lay snuggled in the plethora of shelves at display. You wouldn't believe it dear readers that I heard a real symphony in my ears at that very moment of this august encounter that happened in November. There was no rain today but the bright and sunny spirit of the day was as magical as any rainy day might have made me feel.

I do not know about the other people in the book shop, but to me that very moment felt as if I was on cloud nine. Proverbially it felt as if I was listening with a mellifluous ecstasy to the magic of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.

At that exact moment when I lay my hands or rather I would say I grabbed my hands on the two books that I have been yearning to read since a long time, I guess the entire Universe paused.

Now without having an iota of energy within me to any other further delay in experiencing the magic and in experiencing the mad euphoria that has serenaded my entire being, I take your leave my dearest readers to indulge myself with and in the most pleasurable way possible with Franz Kafka & Fyodor Dostoevsky.”
― Avijeet Das