Quotes from Franz Kafka

Asking questions were the most important thing.

That's how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one's hand.

A man doesn't need to fly to the sun, he need only find a patch of clean earth, and crawl there, and let the sun shine on him.

I was heading for the city in the south, of which they used to say in our village: 'There are people for you! Just think—they never go to sleep!' 'And why don't they?' 'Because they're fools.' 'Don't fools get tired, then?' 'How could fools get tired?

Don't be too hasty, don't take somebody else's opinion without testing it.

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

But sometimes I really felt as though the starry sky rose and fell with the gasping of his chest.

It was half past six and the hands were quietly moving forwards.

Life is astonishingly short. As I look back over it, life seems so foreshortened to me that I can hardly understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that, quite apart from accidents, even the span of a normal life that passes happily may be totally insufficient for such a ride.

But perhaps the enthusiastic sensibility of young women of her age also played a role. This feeling sought release at every opportunity, and with it Grete now felt tempted to want to make Gregor's situation even more terrifying, so that then she would be able to do even more for him than now.

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?

Rolling country, not yet quite mountainous, with woods and lakes, is what I like best.

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion.

I am forever chained to myself; that's what I am, and that's what I must try to live with.

Ich schreibe anders als ich rede, ich rede anders als ich denke, ich denke anders als ich denken soll und so geht es weiter bis ins tiefste Dunkel.

It's often better to be in chains than to be free.

There were dark hours, of course, such as came to everybody, in which you thought you had achieved nothing at all, in which it seemed to you that only the cases predestined from the start to seucceed came to a good end, which they would have reached in any event without your help, while every one of the others was doomed to fail in spite of all your manœuvres, all your exertions, all the illusory little victories on which you plumed yourself.

Am I to leave this world as a man who shies away from all conclusions?

Everyone has his cross to bear.

Away in the distance, a train appeared behind the trees, all its compartments were lit, the windows were sure to be open. One of us started singing a ballad, but we all wanted to sing. We sang far quicker than the speed of the train, we swung our arms because our voices weren't enough, our voices got into a tangle where we felt happy. If you mix your voice with others' voices, you feel as though you're caught on a hook. (trans. Michael Hofmann)

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room.

In the struggle between yourself and the world, hold the world's coat.

I am dead and despise anyone who isn't