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
A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
Let me remind you of the old maxim: people under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins.
A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.
We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
Dread of night. Dread of not-night.
This perversion of the truth, familiar to the artist though it was, always unnerved him afresh and proved too much for him. What was a consequence of the premature ending of his fast was here presented as the cause of it! To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of nonunderstanding, was impossible.
All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained in the dog.
Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself.
The limited circle is pure.
So eager are our people to obliterate the present.
Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.
Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.
The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.