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 should serve as an axe to the ice inside us.
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us.
Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible," she said, "but that alone doesn't make it true
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
If the French were German in their essence, then how the Germans would admire them!
His weariness is that of the gladiator after the combat; his work was the whitewashing of a corner in a state official's office
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
Persons who write a 10,000 word document and call it a brief
One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.