Quotes About Alienation

the poisonous world flows into my mouth like water into that of a drowning man

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous bug…

Lost among these entirely strange people.

Conversations bore me, to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to my soul.

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

I'm not in the right place - alas, I cannot rid myself of the feeling that I'm not in the right place.

I'll shut myself off from everyone to the point of insensibility. Make an enemy of everyone, speak to no one.

There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.

What do I have in common with Jews? I hardly have anything in common with myself, and really ought to go stand myself perfectly still in a corner, grateful to be able to breathe.

A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night.

If he stayed at home and carried on with his normal life he would be a thousand times superior to these people and could get any of them out of his way just with a kick.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.

It puzzled K., at least it puzzled him looking at it from the policemen's point of view, that they had made him go into the room and left him alone there, where he had ten different ways of killing himself. At the same time, though, he asked himself, this time looking at it from his own point of view, what reason he could have to do so. Because those two were sitting there in the next room and had taken his breakfast, perhaps?

I repeat: there was no attraction for me in imitating human beings; I imitated them because I needed a way out, and for no other reason.

What do I have in common with the Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.

WHEN Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect.

Looking on oneself as something alien, forgetting the sight, remembering the gaze.

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

Bio sam uko?en i hladan. Bio sam most, raspet nad bezdanom.

One morning Gregor Samsa found himself, in bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin.

He certainly goes into the offices, but are the offices really the castle? And even if the castle does have offices, are they the offices which Barnabas is allowed to enter?

Yesterday evening during a walk every little street noise, every glance directed at me, every photograph in a display case was more important to me than I was.

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.

By his own account he had no real contact with the local colony of his countrymen and virtually no social intercourse with the Russian families and so resigned himself to becoming an incurable bachelor.