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
It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.
The whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment.
Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment.
"Don't you want to join us?" I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. "No, I don't," I said.
The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.
I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.
...the books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of a person we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation--a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible," she said, "but that alone doesn't make it true
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.
Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore
You may object that it is not a trial at all; you are quite right, for it is only a trial if I recognize it as such.
One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one's triumph.
Persons who write a 10,000 word document and call it a brief
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