Yair’s Reviews > The Diaries of Franz Kafka > Status Update

"Sitting on the two little chairs facing each other on the Champs Elysees. Children staying up much too late are still playing in the semidarkness in which they can no longer see well the lines they have drawn in the sand."

-Kafka, Franz. Diaries (pg. 533)

"It is always the same, always the same"

Kafka, Franz. Diaries (pg. 439)

20 (December 1914) Max’s objection to Dostoyevsky, that he has too many mentally ill characters. Completely incorrect.

"What do I have in common with Jews? I have scarcely anything in common with myself and should stand completely silent in a corner, content that I can breathe."


Kafka, Franz. Diaries (pg. 327)

"The tremendous world I have in my head. But how to free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times better to be torn to pieces than to retain or bury it in me. That’s why I’m here, after all, that’s completely clear to me."

Kafka, Franz. Diaries.

"I had yanked down the electric light, I didn’t want to remain in the dark, a candle was still to be found, so I climbed onto a chair, stuck the candle into the sword pommel, lit it and then sat far into the night under the weak light of the angel."

Kafka, Franz. The Diaries of Franz Kafka (The Schocken Kafka Library) (p. 283). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

"The hollow burned into our surroundings by the work of genius is a good place to put in one’s little light. Hence the incitement that emanates from genius, the general incitement that fires one not only to imitation."

Kafka, Franz. The Diaries of Franz Kafka (The Schocken Kafka Library) (p. 230). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

"To walk, to dress to wash, to read, above all to confine myself at home in a way that caused me the least difficulty and demanded the least courage. If I went beyond that, I came up with only ridiculous ways out."

Kafka, Franz. The Diaries of Franz Kafka (The Schocken Kafka Library) (p. 174). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

"Wretched, wretched and yet well meant. Yes, it’s midnight, but since I’ve slept very well, that is an excuse only insofar as during the day I would have written nothing at all. The burning electric light, the silent apartment, the darkness outside, the last waking moments they give me the right to write and be it even the most wretched things. And this right I use hastily. So that’s who I am."

Kafka, Franz.

"Perhaps in this way I could find a hidden steadfastness in myself."

Kafka, Franz. The Diaries of Franz Kafka (The Schocken Kafka Library) (p. 28). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.