Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafkawas a German-language writer of novels and short stories who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists faced by bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible social-bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include "Die Verwandlung", Der Process, and Das Schloss. The term Kafkaesque has entered the English...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 July 1883
CityPrague, Czech Republic
But questions that don’t answer themselves at the very moment of their asking are never answered.
He is a free and secure citizen of the world because he is on a chain that is long enough to allow him access to all parts of the earth, and yet not so long that he could be swept over the edge of it.
No one can crave what truly harms him.
I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.
Love is a drama of contradictions.
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.
What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.
All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.
They say ignorance is bliss.... they're wrong
People keep themselves at a tolerable height above an infernal abyss toward which they gravitate only by putting out all their strength and lovingly helping one another. They are tied together by ropes, and it's bad enough when the ropes around an individual loosen and he drops somewhat lower than the others into empty space; ghastly when the ropes break and he falls. That's why we should cling to the others.
there is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak
Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.
Two tasks at the beginning of your life: to narrow your orbit more and more, and ever and again to check whether you are not in hiding somewhere outside your orbit.
The man in ecstasy and the man drowning - both throw up their arms. The first to signify harmony, the second to signify strife with the elements.