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
Anyone who believes cannot experience miracles. By day one does not see any stars. Anyone who does miracles says: I cannot let goof the earth.
Nothing, you know, gives the body greater satisfaction than ordering people about, or at least believing in one's ability to do so.
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?
What is gayer than believing in a household god?
In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.
Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.
Believing means liberating the indestructible element in oneself, or, more accurately, liberating oneself, or, more accurately, being indestructible, or, more accurately, being.
Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself
You are free and that is why you are lost
One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
Hesitation before birth. If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.