Franz Kafka Quotes

“All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.”

“I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.”

“One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one willl only in time come to hate. In this there is also a residue of belief that during the move the master will chance to come along the corridor, look at the prisoner and say: "This man is not to be locked up again, He is to come with me.”

“There was once a community of scoundrels, that is to say, they were not scoundrels, but ordinary people.”

“Kill me, or you are a murderer.”

“One reads in order to ask questions”

“Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.”

“A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.”

“I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.”

“In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.”

“At that point I asked myself: How is it that she is not amazed at herself, that she keeps her lips closed and makes no such remark?”

“For words are magical formulae. They leave finger marks be hind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye become the footprints of history. One ought to watch one' s every word.”

“I am on the hunt for constructions. I come into a room and find them whitely merging in a corner.”

“The true word leads; the untrue misleads.”

“The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”

“My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it.”

“I made the remark that I don't avoid people in order to live quietly, but rather in order to be able to die quietly.”

“No one can crave what truly harms him.”

“Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”

“If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?”

“The worries that are the burden of which the privileged person makes an excuse in dealing with the oppressed person are in fact the worries about preserving his privileged condition.”

“It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.”

“If you find someone who makes you smile, who checks up on you often to see if you're okay. Who watches out or you and wants the best for you. Who loves and respects you. Don't let them go. People like that are hard to find.”

“I'm thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.”

“Anyone who renounces the world must love all men, for he renounces their world too. He thus begins to have some inkling of the true nature of man, which cannot but be loved, always assuming that one is its peer.”