Franz Kafka Quotes

“There will be no proof that I ever was a writer.”

“Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.”

“We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.”

“Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.”

“Palestine needs earth, but it does not need lawyers.”

“Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.”

“One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.”

“If they were shocked, then Gregor had no further responsibility and could be calm. But if they took everything calmly, he he, too, had no reason to get excited and could, if he hurried, actually be at the station by eight o'clock.”

“By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.”

“Like tired dogs they stand there, because they use up all their strength in remaining upright in one's memory.”

“I can once more carry on a conversation with myself, and don't stare so into complete emptiness. Only in this way is there any possibility of improvement for me.”

“Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more.”

“When K. looked at the castle, often it seemed to him as if he were observing someone who sat quietly there in front of him gazing, not lost in thought and so oblivious of everything, but free and untroubled, as if he were alone with nobody to observe him, and yet must notice that he was observed, and all the same remained with his calm not even slightly disturbed; and really - one did not know whether it was cause or effect - the gaze of the observer could not remain concentrated there, but slid away.”

“What is written is merely the dregs of experience.”

“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.”

“Writing means revealing oneself to excess.”

“What am I doing here in this endless winter?”

“I want in fact more of you. In my mind I am dressing you with light; I am wrapping you up in blankets of complete acceptance and then I give myself to you. I long for you; I who usually long without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.”

“Leop­ards break in­to the tem­ple and drink all the sac­ri­fi­cial ves­sels dry; it keeps hap­pen­ing; in the end, it can be cal­cu­lat­ed in ad­vance and is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the rit­ual.”

“Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.”

“Picasso only registers the deformities which have not yet penetrated our consciousness. Art is a mirror which goes 'fast' like a watch - sometimes.”

“You can choose to be free , but it's last decision you'll ever make”

“The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us.”

“Every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.”

“If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.”