Quotes from Franz Kafka

I look a girl in the eye and it was a very long love story with thunder and kisses and lightning. I live fast.

Guilt is never to be doubted.

Your will is free means: it was free when it wanted the desert, it is free since it can choose the path that leads to crossing the desert, it is free since it can choose the pace, but it is also unfree since you must go through the desert, unfree since every path in labyrinthine manner touches every foot of the desert's surface.

Wherever I turn, the black wave rushes down on me.

He] used to be so insignificant that one literally felt alone in his presence.

I can never tear myself open wide enough to people to reveal everything and so frighten them away.

Isolation is a way to know ourselves.

I weigh my past against my future, but find them both admirable, cannot give either the preference, and find nothing to grumble at save the injustice of Providence that has so clearly favored me.

And actually it's not at all you I love, but rather the existence you have bestowed on me.

Yet even if I manage that, one single slip, and a slip cannot be avoided, will stop the whole process, easy and painful alike, and I will have to shrink back into my own circle again.

my joints ache with fatigue, my dried up body trembles toward its own destruction in turmoils of which I dare not become fully conscious, in my head are astonishing convulsions.

The gesture of rejection with which I was forever met did not mean: 'I do not love you,' but: 'You cannot love me, much as you would like; you are unhappily in love with your love for me, but your love for me is not in love with you.' It is consequently incorrect to say that I have known the words, 'I love you'; I have known only the expectant stillness that should have been broken by my 'I love you,' that is all that I have known, nothing more.

If you have food in your jaws you have solved all questions for the time being.

Today one may pluck out one's very heart and not find it.

It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise; it is because of impatience that they do not return.

my world is collapsing, my world is rebuilding itself; wait and see how you (meaning me) survive it all. I'm not lamenting the falling apart, it was already in a state of collapse, what I'm lamenting is the rebuilding, I lament my waning strength, I lament being born, I lament the light of the sun.

I did not fall heavily, nor did I feel any pain, but I felt so weak and unhappy that I buried my face in the ground: I could not bear the strain of seeing around me the things of the earth. I felt convinced that every movement and every thought was forced, and that one had to be one's guard against them. Yet nothing seemed more natural than to lie here on the grass, my arms beside my body, my face hidden.

Sometimes in his arrogance he has more anxiety for the world than for himself.

Wenn Du vor mir stehst und mich ansiehst, was weißt Du von den Schmerzen, die in mir sind und was weiß ich von den Deinen. Und wenn ich mich vor Dir niederwerfen würde und weinen und erzählen, was wüsstest Du von mir mehr als von der Hölle, wenn Dir jemand erzählt, sie ist heiß und fürchterlich. Schon darum sollten wir Menschen voreinander so ehrfürchtig, so nachdenklich, so liebend stehn wie vor dem Eingang zur Hölle.

Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wie lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder verstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muss die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.

Auch ist es vielleicht nicht eigentlich Liebe wenn ich sage, daß Du mir das Liebste bist; Liebe ist, dass Du mir das Messer bist, mit dem ich in mir wühle. An Milena Jesenska (14. September 1920)

How are we to avoid those in office becoming deeply corrupt when everything is devoid of meaning?

The onlookers go rigid when the train goes past.

Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives on Sunday — for I cannot endure your daily letters, I am incapable of enduring them. For instance, I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you