Franz Kafka

Novelist

1883-07-03 – 1924-06-03

Franz Kafka was a German-language writer from Prague whose fiction explored bureaucracy, alienation, and existential anxiety. Major works include The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle. His posthumously published novels and stories made him one of the defining writers of the 20th century.

Books by Franz Kafka

Das Schloß
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Metamorphosis
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Der Proceß
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Quotes by Franz Kafka

Shoulder to shoulder, a coordinated movement of the people, their blood no longer confined in the limited circulation of the body but rolling sweetly and yet still returning through the infinite extent of China.
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However, Gregor had become much calmer. All right, people did not understand his words any more, although they seemed clear enough to him, clearer than previously, perhaps because had gotten used to them
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The limited circle is pure.
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The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.
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Concerning this a man once said:Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parablesyou yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares.Another said: I bet that is also a parable.The first said: You have won.The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.The first said: No, in reality; in parable you have lost.
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my heart no longer beats but is a tugging muscle,
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Today one may pluck out one's very heart and not find it.
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Was he a beast if music could move him so?
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I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need 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 within us. That is my belief.
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The observer of the soul cannot penetrate into the soul, but there doubtless is a margin where he comes into contact with it.
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Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
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You're not cross with me, though? he said. She pulled her hand away and answered, No, no, I'm never cross with anyone.
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Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.
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So then you're free?' —Yes, I'm free,' said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.
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What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream.
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I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.
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In general I lacked principally the ability to provide even in the slightest detail for the real future. I thought only of things in the present and their present condition, not because of thoroughness or any special, strong interest, but rather, to the extent that weakness in thinking was not the cause, because of sorrow and fear – sorrow, because the present was so sad for me that I thought I could not leave it before it resolved itself into happiness; fear, because, like my fear of the slightest action in the present, I also considered myself, in view of my contemptible, childish appearance, unworthy of forming a serious, responsible opinion of the great, manly future which usually seemed so impossible to me that every short step forward appeared to me to be counterfeit and the next step unattainable.
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I only fear danger where I want to fear it.
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I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.
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The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.
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