Franz Kafka Quotes

“I am a cage, in search of a bird.”
― Franz Kafka

“I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment.”
― Franz Kafka

“But sleep? On a night like this? What an idea! Just think of how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.”
― Franz Kafka

“Self-control is something for which I do not strive. Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.”
― Franz Kafka

“I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“He was shy, timid, gentle, and kind, but he wrote gruesome and painful books. He saw the world as full of invisible demons, who tear apart and destroy defenseless people. He was too clear-sighted and too wise to be able to live; he was too weak to fight, he had that weakness of noble, beautiful people who are not able to do battle against the fear of misunderstandings, unkindness, or intellectual lies. Such persons know beforehand that they are powerless and go down in defeat in such a way that they shame the victor. He knew people as only people of great sensitivity are able to know them, as somebody who is alone and sees people almost prophetically, from one flash of a face. He knew the world in a deep and extraordinary manner. He was himself a deep and extraordinary world.”
― Milena Jesenska

“I have no literary interests; I am made of literature. I am nothing else and cannot be anything else.”
― Franz Kafka

“If I didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He'd fall right off his desk! And it's a funny sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is hard of hearing.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“A tortured man but a marvellous writer, complex and yet also entirely simple. As I always say, one is never too young to be reading Kafka, and never too old to be reading him differently.”
― Panayotis Cacoyannis, The Madness of Grief

“When I am not reading Kafka I am thinking about Kafka. When I am not thinking about Kafka I miss thinking about him. Having missed thinking about him for a while, I take him out and read him again. That’s how it works.”
― László Krasznahorkai

“And I close my eyes to gaze into those depths, and am almost engulfed in you.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“I don't need any proofs for you; there is nothing in my mind as clear and certain as you....”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“The three of them knew it. She was Kafka’s mistress. Kafka had dreamt her. The three of them knew it. He was Kafka’s friend. Kafka had dreamt him. The three of them knew it. The woman said to the friend, Tonight I want you to have me. The three of them knew it. The man replied: If we sin, Kafka will stop dreaming us. One of them knew it. There was no longer anyone on earth. Kafka said to himself Now the two of them have gone, I’m left alone. I’ll stop dreaming myself.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I sink into your eyes whenever I'm looking at you. and feel your eyes on me whenever I'm walking around the room and all the time I am aware, with a pride I can no longer contain, that I am living for you, that I am allowed to do so ......”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“Yet even if I manage that, one single slip, and a slip cannot be avoided, will stop the whole process, easy and painful alike, and I will have to shrink back into my own circle again.”
― Franz Kafka

“it's impossible to understand how my breast could expand and contract to breathe this air, it's impossible to understand how you can be far away.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“Written kisses never arrive at their destination; the ghosts drink them up along the way.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“An und für sich ist uns das Lachen immer nah; trotz allem Jammer unseres Lebens ist ein leises Lachen bei uns gewissermaßen immer zu Hause.”
― Franz Kafka, Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk

“Rather like "Orwellian", the term "Kafkaesque" has come to be used, often enough by those who have not read a word of Kafka, to describe what are perceived as typically or even uniquely modern traumas: existential alienation, isolation and insecurity, the labyrinth of state bureaucracy, the corrupt or whimsical abuse of totalitarian power, the impenetrable tangle of legal systems, the knock on the door in the middle of the night….”
― John R. Williams, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“For healthy people, life is only an unconscious and unavowed flight from the consciousness that one day one must die. Illness is always a warning and a trial of strength. And so illness, pain, [and] suffering are the most important sources of religious feeling.”
― Franz Kafka

“At this point, almost against his will, he looked at the face of the corpse. It was as it had been in his life. He could discover no sign of the promised transfiguration. What all the others had found in the machine, the Officer had not. His lips were pressed firmly together, his eyes were open and looked as they had when he was alive, his gaze was calm and convinced. The tip of a large iron needle had gone through his forehead.”
― Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony

“In an enchanting encounter with the myriad books that I met in a cosy book shop today, I couldn't help but get bedazzled with the cornucopia of stories and poetry that lay snuggled in the plethora of shelves at display. You wouldn't believe it dear readers that I heard a real symphony in my ears at that very moment of this august encounter that happened in November. There was no rain today but the bright and sunny spirit of the day was as magical as any rainy day might have made me feel.

I do not know about the other people in the book shop, but to me that very moment felt as if I was on cloud nine. Proverbially it felt as if I was listening with a mellifluous ecstasy to the magic of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.

At that exact moment when I lay my hands or rather I would say I grabbed my hands on the two books that I have been yearning to read since a long time, I guess the entire Universe paused.

Now without having an iota of energy within me to any other further delay in experiencing the magic and in experiencing the mad euphoria that has serenaded my entire being, I take your leave my dearest readers to indulge myself with and in the most pleasurable way possible with Franz Kafka & Fyodor Dostoevsky.”
― Avijeet Das

“The father himself didn't follow his own criticisms and rules too strictly, and this very lack of logic appears to the son, on looking back, as a sign of unruly zest for life and unbreakable will-power. 'You had worked yourself up to such a position by your own strength, that you had unlimited confidence in your own opinion...From your armchair you ruled the world. Your opinion was right, everybody else was mad, eccentric, meshuggah, not normal. At the same time your self-confidence was so great that there was no need for you to be consistent, and yet you were always right...”
― Max Brod, Franz Kafka

“And perhaps he had made no mistake at all, his name really was called, it having been the teacher's intention to make the rewarding of the best student at the same time a punishment for the worst one.”
― Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes

“If they could and if they dared, they would long ago have enticed the animal to come yet closer to them, so that they might be more frightened than ever. But in reality the animal is not at all eager to approach them, as long as it is left alone it takes just as little notice of them as of the men, and probably what it would like best would be to remain in the hiding place where it lives in the periods between the services, evidently in some hole in the wall that we have not yet discovered.”
― Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes

“Poseidon sat at his desk, doing figures. The administration of all the waters gave him endless work. [...] It cannot be said that he enjoyed his work; he did it only because it had been assigned to him; in fact, he had already filed many petitions for--as he put it--more cheerful work, but every time the offer of something different was made to him it turned out that nothing suited him quite as well as his present position.”
― Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes

“I ran past the first watchman. Then I was horrified, ran back and said to the watchman: "I ran through here while you were looking the other way." The watchman gazed ahead of him and said nothing. "I suppose I really oughtn't to have done it," I said. The watchman still said nothing. "Does your silence indicate permission to pass?”
― Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes

“He asked me several things, but I couldn't answer, indeed I didn't even understand his questions. So I said: "Perhaps you are sorry now that you invited me, so I'd better go," and I was about to get up. But he stretched his hand out over the table and pressed me down. "Stay," he said, "that was only a test. He who does not answer the questions has passed the test.”
― Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes

“Sometimes, people leave because things don't work, and sometimes they leave because they found someone.”
― Wajid Shaikh, Sukoon