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
Faith, like a guillotine. As heavy, as light.
A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.
Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.
He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.
Our art is a way of being dazzled by truth: the light on the grotesquely grimacing retreating face is true, and nothing else.
All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. If one could but realize this knowledge, if one could but bring it into the light of day, if we dogs would but own that we know infinitely more than we admit to ourselves!
I want in fact more of you. In my mind I am dressing you with light; I am wrapping you up in blankets of complete acceptance and then I give myself to you. I long for you; I who usually long without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of 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