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
I am on the hunt for constructions. I come into a room and find them whitely merging in a corner.
And I leave my post of observation and find I have had enough of this outside life; I feel that there is nothing more that I can learn here, either now or at any time. And I long to say a last goodbye to everything up here, to go down into my burrow never to return again, let things take their course, and not try to retard them with my profitless vigils.
If this is what you came for, then I didn't send for you. Kafka (note to himself in journal)
You too have weapons.
There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.
The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.
Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into." "You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.
Like tired dogs they stand there, because they use up all their strength in remaining upright in one's memory.
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.
What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.
Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.
there is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak
They say ignorance is bliss.... they're wrong
All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.