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
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.
Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.
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.
Towards the avoidance of a piece of verbal confusion: What is intended to be actively destroyed must first of all have been firmly grasped; what crumbles away crumbles away, but cannot be destroyed.
First impressions are always unreliable.
Adam's first domestic pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent.
I'm thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.
Isn't it only natural to leave a place where one is so bitterly hated?...The heroism involved in staying put in spite of it all is the heroism of a cockroach, which also won't be driven out of the bathroom.
Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible," she said, "but that alone doesn't make it true
You are free and that is why you are lost
Persons who write a 10,000 word document and call it a brief
One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one's triumph.
No people sing with such pure voices as those that live in deepest hell; what we take for the song of angels is their song.
Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial chalices dry; this occurs repeatedly, again and again; finally it can be reckoned upon beforehand and becomes part of the ceremony