Quotes from Franz Kafka

La comparación del pájaro en mano y ciento volando sólo se puede aplicar aquí muy relativamente. En la mano no tengo nada, volando está todo y sin embargo -así lo determinan las condiciones del combate y las necesidades de la vida- tengo que elegir la nada.

Don't look at him! he snapped, without noticing how odd it was to speak to free men in this way

It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.

For Kafka, paradise wasn't a place where people lived in the past and of which a memory has survived, but rather a perennial, hidden presence. In every moment, an immense, encompassing obstacle prevents us from seeing it. That obstacle is nothing other than the expulsion from paradise—a process Kafka called "eternal in its principal aspect.

Selfishness is one of the surest signs of profound unhappiness.

Always asking the doctor for the impossible. They've lost their old faith; the priest sits home and picks his vestments to pieces, one after another; but the doctor is supposed to accomplish everything with his gentle, surgical hands.

Sometimes I'm overcome with such an aversion to human beings that I can barely refrain from retching.

Written kisses never arrive at their destination; the ghosts drink them up along the way.

Biri sana cehennemi s?cak ve korkunçtur diye anlatt???nda cehennem hakk?nda ne bilebilirsen, benim hakk?mda da ancak o kadar?n? bilebilirsin...

Silence, I believe, avoids me, as water on the beach avoids stranded fish.

Hold fast! then you too will see the unchangeable dark distance, out of which nothing can come except one day the chariot; it rolls up, gets bigger and bigger, fills the whole world at the moment it reaches you - and you sink into it like a child sinking into the upholstery of a carriage that drives through the storm and night.

The man from the country has not expected such difficulties; the law, he thinks, should be accessible to everyone and at all times; but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose, his long, sparse, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better, after all, to wait until he receives permission to enter.

And when once in a while some leisurely passer-by stopped, made merry over the old figure on the board, and spoke of swindling, that was in its own way the stupidest lie ever invented by indifference and inborn malice, since it was not the hunger artist who was cheating, he was working honestly, but the world was cheating him of his reward.

If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear, I would be no longer alive.

Every dog has, as I do, the urge to question. And I, like all dogs, have the compulsion to be silent.

Even years afterward I suffered from the tormenting fancy that the huge man, my father, the ultimate authority, would come almost for no reason at all and take me out of bed in the night and carry me out onto the pavlatche, and that consequently I meant absolutely nothing as far as he was concerned.

Only that which happens is possible.

However, even this would not have helped me had I not remembered that I was loved by a girl with a black velvet ribbon around her neck, if not passionately, at least faithfully.

You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love" - Letters to Milena

Es perfectamente imaginable que el esplendor de la vida está dispuesto, siempre en toda plenitud, alrededor de cada uno, pero cubierto de un velo, en las profundidades, invisible muy lejos. Sin embargo está ahí, no hostil, no a disgusto, no sordo, viene si uno lo llama con la palabra correcta, por su nombre correcto, Es la esencia de la magia, que no crea, sino llama.

Odandan ç?kman gerekmez, masanda oturmaya devam et ve dinle.. Dinleme bile, sadece bekle..bekleme bile, gerçekten sakin ve yaln?z ol. Dünya özgürce sunacakt?r kendini sana..maskesinden s?yr?lmak için baÅŸka seçeneÄŸi yok, huÅŸu içinde yuvarlanacakt?r ayaklar?n?n dibine..

All he wanted to do now was to get up quietly and undisturbed, get dressed, and, most important, eat breakfast, and only then consider what to do next, because, as he was well aware, in bed he could never think of anything through to a reasonable conclusion.

She is so distinct to me, it's as though I had run my hands all over her.

The correspondence on this subject brings one again and again to the conclusion that you're united by an all but sacramental indissoluble marriage (...) to your husband, and I by a similar marriage to - I don't know whom, but the eye of this terrible wife often lies on me, I feel it.