Quotes from Franz Kafka

Gregor erschrak, als er seine antwortende Stimme hörte, die wohl unverkennbar seine frühere war, in die sich aber, wie von unten her, ein nicht zu unterdrückendes, schmerzliches Piepsen mischte, das die Worte förmlich nur im ersten Augenblick in ihrer Deutlichkeit beließ, um sie im Nachklang derart zu zerstören, daß man nicht wußte, ob man recht gehört hatte.

His last words to Robert Klopstock are 'Kill me, or you are a murderer.

Oh, if only you knew how hard I try to find a kernel of good for myself in all you do and say, even if it torments me.

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted. (Wenn es möglich gewesen wäre, den Turm von Babel zu erbauern ohne ihn zu erklettern, es wäre erlaubt worden.)

Insónia quase total, atormentado por sonhos, que teriam querido gravar na matéria refractária que sou.

It follows, perhaps, that we are now both married, you in Vienna, I to my fear in Prague, and that not only you, but I too, tug in vain at our marriage.

Ciertamente, perros, pero no para morir aquí, sino para llegar allá, a la verdad, para salir de este mundo de mentiras, donde no se encuentra a nadie de quien obtener la verdad, tampoco de mi, ciudadano innato de la mentira

Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves and is ready to release what lies deeper.

With a kind of perverse obstinancy his father refused to take off his official uniform even in the house; and while his robe hung uselessly on the clothes hook, his father dozed, completely dressed, in his chair, as if he were always ready for duty and were waiting even here for the voice of his superior.

At the same time all the houses round about promptly took part in this silence, and so did the darkness above them, reaching as far as the stars. And the footsteps of invisible passers-by, whose course I had no wish to guess at, the wind that kept on driving against the other side of the street, the gramophone singing behind closed windows in some room - they made themselves heard in this silence, as if they had owned it for ever and ever.

Once Kafka came to regard any philosophy as nothing more than a system of rules to be enforced, a dogma both bigger and smaller than himself, he withdrew from it.

Kafka saw his tuberculosis as a liberation; interestingly, he called it the animal.

Yes, the wardrobe. It will probably be the object of our first and last fight. I'll say: 'Let's throw it out.' You'll say: 'It must stay.' I'll say: 'Choose between it and me.' You'll say: 'At once. Frank and Schrank, they rhyme. I choose the wardrobe.' 'Good,' I'll say, and slowly descend the stairs (which?) and - if I haven't found the Danube canal, I'll still be alive today.

Absurdo, completamente absurdo, una misma se confunde cuando juega con esos absurdos

Later, the family, led ferociously by the father, forces Gregor into his room like a naughty child. And Gregor, for his part, has no interest in adult matters. He loathes his profession. He has no intention of finding a companion; the only woman in his life, besides his sister and mother, is the pin-up girl in the guilt frame.

At the expense of Gregor's sacrifice, the sister, at the end of the story, stretches her arrogant body and gets the liberation Gregor longed for. Under Gregor's care first, and then her parents', the sister enjoys a healthy childhood, one leading to physical and mental development, and one in which she isn't trapped. Yet our loyalty to Gregor extends even beyond death, and his sister's cheery success story offers but a bitter pill

I am a memory come alive, hence my insomnia.

yet to be moved by music is essentially human; it reflects sensitivity. The life Gregor led as a human being left no room for this kind of appreciation. But, regressing into an animal, his sensibility has become refined rather than coarsened.

one must not prostrate oneself before the minor impossibilities, otherwise the major impossibilities would never come into view.

If I didn't hold back for my parents' sake, I would've quit ages ago.

I've written already, the trip could only be made feasible by a lie and of lying I'm afraid, not like a man of honour, but like a pupil.

Kafka, it seems, is at his best when he fails.

Now, her bedside table had been pulled into the middle of the room to be used as a desk for these proceedings, and the supervisor sat behind it.

Then, at the last moment, I am forced to admit to myself that I was right after all, and that it was really impossible to go down into the burrow without exposing the thing I love best, for a little while at least, to all my enemies, on the ground, in the trees, in the air.