Franz Kafka: Trending quotes

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Franz Kafka: 532 quotes129 likes

“I lack nothing. I only needed myself.”

“Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

First lines, Ch. 1
Variant translation: Somebody must have slandered Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.
Source: The Trial (1920)
Context: Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. His landlady's cook, who always brought him his breakfast at eight o'clock, failed to appear on this occasion. That had never happened before.

“He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis

“Writing is a deeper sleep than death.
Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave,
I can't be dragged from my desk at night.”

“Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.”

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial (1920)

“Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Felice

Source: Letters to Felice‎

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

“If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?”

“What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis

“Writing is prayer.”

“Forget everything. Open the windows. Clear the room. The wind blows through it. You see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don’t find yourself.”

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“I like to make use of what I know”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial

“All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. If one could but realize this knowledge, if one could but bring it into the light of day, if we dogs would but own that we know infinitely more than we admit to ourselves!”

"Investigations of a Dog"
The Complete Stories (1971)
Source: The Great Wall of China and Other Stories

“2 November. This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.”

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“It would be very unjust to say that you deserted me, but that I was deserted, and sometimes terribly so, is true.”

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“No matter how much you keep encouraging someone who is blindfolded to stare through the cloth, he still won’t see a thing.".”

“Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.”

“My condition is not unhappiness, but it is also not happiness, not indifference, not weakness, not fatigue, not another interest – so what is it then?”

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.”