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
and in that recurring dream, I found myself trapped in some sort of gigantic game of which I was unfamiliar with the rules; lost in a labyrinthine town of dark and damp, criss-crossing streets, ambiguous characters of uncertain authority having no idea of why I was there nor what I had to do, and where the first sign of the beginning of understanding was the wish to die.
Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery.
The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.
But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?
This noble body, equipped with everything necessary, almost to the point of bursting, also appeared to carry freedom around with it.
If all responsibility is imposed on you, then you may want to exploit the moment and want to be overwhelmed by the responsibility;yet if you try, you will notice that nothing was imposed on you, but that you are yourself this responsibility.
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.
The fact that there is nothing but a spiritual world deprives us of hope and gives us certainty.
The worries that are the burden of which the privileged person makes an excuse in dealing with the oppressed person are in fact the worries about preserving his privileged condition.
Palestine needs earth, but it does not need lawyers.
If what was supposed to have been destroyed in Paradise was destructible, then it was not decisive; but if it was indestructible, then we are living in a false belief.
Anybody who preserves the ability to recognize beauty will never get old.
I wanted to escape the unrest, to shut out the voices around me and within me, so I write.
There is a goal but no way; what we call the way is mere wavering.