Metamorphosis and Other Stories Quotes

“WHEN Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“It seems hard to remain a bachelor...to model your appearance and behaviour on one or two bachelors remembered from your youth.
That is how it will be, only that in reality it will be you yourself standing there, today and later, with a body and a real head, and so with a brow too, to strike with your hand.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“Parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. We lose in parable the moment we pin things down to an accessible meaning.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“…it’s easy to play the part of a rescuer of these particular people, who are habituated to suffering, unsparing of themselves, quick to make their minds up, familiar with death, only appearing to be timid because of the atmosphere of derring-do in which they constantly live, and in addition are as prolific as they are brave – it’s an easy thing as I say to come along and claim to be the rescuer of these people, who have somehow always managed to rescue themselves, with such losses that the historian – in general we neglect the study of history – is apt to go rigid with shock.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“Often in variety shows, before my own appearance, I have watched couples practicing on the trapeze. They swung, they climbed, they leapt, they floated into one another’s arms, one gripped the other by the hair with his teeth.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“When you mix your voice with others you are caught like a fish on a hook.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“Totodată nu pierdu însă prilejul să-și amintească, printre picături, că e preferabil să chibzuiască liniștit și chiar cât se poate de liniștit, decât să ia hotărâri disperate.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“I am as I am, and that’s all there is to it, ’ he said to himself, ‘I can hardly take a pair of scissors to myself, and cut out a different person who might be a better friend to him.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories