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
People keep themselves at a tolerable height above an infernal abyss toward which they gravitate only by putting out all their strength and lovingly helping one another. They are tied together by ropes, and it's bad enough when the ropes around an individual loosen and he drops somewhat lower than the others into empty space; ghastly when the ropes break and he falls. That's why we should cling to the others.
You are free and that is why you are lost
One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
Hesitation before birth. If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.
What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself
His weariness is that of the gladiator after the combat; his work was the whitewashing of a corner in a state official's office
If the French were German in their essence, then how the Germans would admire them!
Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible," she said, "but that alone doesn't make it true
No people sing with such pure voices as those that live in deepest hell; what we take for the song of angels is their song.
Persons who write a 10,000 word document and call it a brief
One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one's triumph.
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.
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.
Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore