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
In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.
Religions get lost as people do.
Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.
How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.
Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause. Everything that is not literature bores me and I hate it. I lack all aptitude for family life except, at best, as an observer. I have no family feeling and visitors make me almost feel as though I were maliciously being attacked.
Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.
The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.
Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.
The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.
If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.
We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.
Evil is whatever distracts.
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.