Quotes from Franz Kafka

L'éternité, c'est long ... surtout vers la fin.

The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.

Love is a drama of contradictions.

We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.

First impressions are always unreliable.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

We are as forlorn as children lost in the wood. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours? And if I were to cast myself down before you and tell you, what more would you know about me that you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful?

I want in fact more of you. In my mind I am dressing you with light; I am wrapping you up in blankets of complete acceptance and then I give myself to you. I long for you; I who usually long without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.

Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.

Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.

Kill me, or you are a murderer.

Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.

You are free and that is why you are lost.

What am I doing here in this endless winter?

I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels.

All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.

You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart; imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state.

We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man the most guilty.

They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.

it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.

I am not well; I could have built the Pyramids with the effort it takes me to cling on to life and reason.

Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.

Please — consider me a dream.