Quotes from Franz Kafka

My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature. Since I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else, my job will never take possession of me, it may, however, shatter me completely, and this is by no means a remote possibility.

I mustn't look at you too much, or I won't be able to take my eyes off you at all.

Lost among these entirely strange people.

There can be no more beautiful spot to die in, no spot more worthy of total despair, than one's own novel.

No, I didn't imagine my being alone with you the way you do. If I want the impossible, I want it in its entirety. Entirely alone, dearest, I wanted us to be entirely alone on this earth, entirely alone under the sky, and to lead my life, my life that is yours, without distraction and with complete concentration, in you.

I have no literary interests; I am made of literature. I am nothing else and cannot be anything else.

Either the world is so tiny or we are so enormous, in any case we fill it completely.

Don't you want to join us? I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. No, I don't, I said.

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.

The man in ecstasy and the man drowning—both throw up their arms.

The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.

It is as if a person were a prisoner, and he had not only the intention to escape, which would perhaps be attainable, but also, and indeed simultaneously, the intention to rebuild the prison as a pleasure dome for himself. But if he escapes, he cannot rebuild, and if he rebuilds, he cannot escape.

I didn't want any new clothes at all; because if I had to look ugly anyway, I wanted to at least be comfortable. I let the awful clothes affect even my posture, walked around with my back bowed, my shoulders drooping, my hands and arms all over the place. I was afraid of mirrors, because they showed an inescapable ugliness.

But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?

But I will write in spite of everything, absolutely; it is my struggle for self-preservation.

Let the future sleep for now, as it deserves. If you wake it too early, you get a groggy present.

I am fond of lovers but I cannot love, I am too far away, am banished

Like a Dog!

My grandfather used to say: Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that -not to mention accidents- even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.

Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before.

By your side I'm most quiet and most unquiet, most inhibited and most free.

If I didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He'd fall right off his desk! And it's a funny sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is hard of hearing.

This perversion of the truth, familiar to the artist though it was, always unnerved him afresh and proved too much for him. What was a consequence of the premature ending of his fast was here presented as the cause of it! To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of nonunderstanding, was impossible.

I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.