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
What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself
It's often safer to be in chains than to be free
One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one's triumph.
A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
But eternity is not temporality at a standstill. What is oppressive about the concept of the eternal is the justification, incomprehensible to us, that time must undergo in eternity and the logical conclusion of that, the justification of ourselves as we are.
If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.
What is written is merely the dregs of experience.
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
First impressions are always unreliable.
Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man.
My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it.
The Diabolical sometimes assumes the aspect of the Good, or even embodies itself completely in its form. If this remains concealedfrom me, I am of course defeated, for this Good is more tempting than the genuine Good.
The true word leads; the untrue misleads.
If what was supposed to have been destroyed in Paradise was destructible, then it was not decisive; but if it was indestructible, then we are living in a false belief.