May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.
Yours(now I’m even losing my name – it was getting shorter and shorter all the time and is now: Yours)
He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.
All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.
But I’m not guilty,” said K. “there’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.” “That is true” said the priest “but that is how the guilty speak
I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require an expenditure of so much strength.
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back.
The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.
But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?
Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.
Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.
A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.”, July 5, 1922]
Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.
This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.
We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.
Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.
What is written is merely the dregs of experience.
Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue.
If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he’ll never see anything.
Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.
Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?
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.
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.
What’s happened to me,’ he thought. It was no dream.
So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.
Most men are not wicked… They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.
You’re not cross with me, though?” he said. She pulled her hand away and answered, “No, no, I’m never cross with anyone.
Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
The observer of the soul cannot penetrate into the soul, but there doubtless is a margin where he comes into contact with it.
Today one may pluck out one’s very heart and not find it.
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.
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
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.
My health is only just good enough for myself alone, not good enough for marriage, let alone fatherhood. Yet when I read your letter, I feel I could overlook even what cannot possibly be overlooked.
I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.
[He] used to be so insignificant that one literally felt alone in his presence.
[He] used to be soinsignificant that one literally felt alone in his presence.
Human nature, essentially changeable, unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it renders everything asunder, the wall, and the bonds and its very self.
It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.
I am as I am, and that’s all there is to it, I can hardly take a pair of scissors to myself, and cut out a different person…
I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.
He has the feeling that merely by being alive he is blocking his own way. From this sense of hindrance, in turn, he deduces the proof that he is alive.
sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless manthe most guilty.
One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.
If you have food in your jaws you have solved all questions for the time being.
It is only because of their stupidity that they are able to be so sure of themselves.
Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment.
What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.
The existence of the writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obviously taken flight from the real ego, but not improved itself, only become a writer.
She is so distinct to me, it’s as though I had run my hands all over her.
You have given me a gift such as I never even dreamt of finding in this life.
Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.
I look a girl in the eye and it was a very long love story with thunder and kisses and lightning. I live fast.
Life is hard, the earth stubborn, science rich in knowledge but poor in practical results.
All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.
If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive.
Could K. represent the congregation all by himself? What if he had been a stranger merely visiting the church? That was more or less his position.
Other opportunities arise from time to time that almost don’t accord with the overall situation, opportunities whereby a word, a glance, a sigh of trust may achieve more than a lifetime of exhausting endeavour.
Incidentally, it’s easy to write prescriptions, but difficult to come to an understanding with people.
One hears a great many things, true, but can gather nothing definite.
All right then, I’ll be mad at you on this score, which incidentally is no great misfortune, as things balance out quite well if there’s a little anger for you lurking in one corner of my heart.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
Herr Kafka, essen Sie keine Eier.” (As one and only piece of dialog K recalls from his meeting with Rudolf Steiner – “Mr. Kafka don’t eat eggs.
Am I to leave this world as a man who shies away from all conclusions?
Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.
It occurs to me that I really can’t remember your face in any precise detail. Only the way you walked away through the tables in the café, your figure, your dress, that I still see.
It’s impossible to defend oneself in the absence of goodwill
One idiot is one idiot. Two idiots are two idiots. Ten thousand idiots are a political party.
I am so miserable, there are so many questions, I can see no way out and am so wretched and feeble that I could lie forever on the sofa and keep opening and closing my eyes without knowing the difference.
He had probably been thrown out of a wine shop, and it hadn’t quite dawned on him yet.
People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as ‘nauseatingly miserable beyond repair’.
I am a very unhappy human being and you, dearest, simply had to be summoned to create an equilibrium for all this misery.
I believe that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book does not rouse us with a blow then why read it?
I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.
Don’t be too hasty, don’t take somebody else’s opinion without testing it.
But what now if all the peace, the comfort, the contentment were to come to a horrible end?
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
No sooner is it a little calmer with me than it is almost too calm as though I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy
One must not cheat anybody not even the world of one’s triumph.
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.
In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.
So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.
The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.
We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.
How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.
My ‘fear’ is my substance, and probably the best part of me.
There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.
Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.
Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.
Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
Don Quixote’s misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.
Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.
Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.