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
If I didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He'd fall right off his desk! And it's a funny sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is hard of hearing.
And so gentlemen, I learned. Oh, if you have to learn, you learn; if you’re desperate for a way out, you learn; you learn pitilessly. You stand over yourself with a whip in your hand; if there’s the least resistance, you lash yourself.
. . . The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation-a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.
In a way, I was safe writing
April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.
Why do we complain about the Fall? It is not on its account that we were expelled from Paradise, but on account of the Tree of Life, lest we might eat of it.
What am I doing here in this endless winter?
Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.
[Love] has as few problems as a motocar. The only problems are the driver, the passengers, and the road.
Sometimes I think I can expiate all my past and future sins through the aching of my bones.
I am more uncertain than I ever was; I feel only the power of life. And I am senselessly empty.
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?
Simply wait, be quiet, still The world will freely offer itself to you.
Celibacy and suicide are a similar levels of understanding, suicide and a martyr's death not so by any means, perhaps marriage and a martyr's death.