Franz Kafka

“The Bible is a sanctum; the world, sputum.”

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”

“Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.”

“Fear of night. Fear of not night.”

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

“Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”

“I only fear danger where I want to fear it.”

“One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.”

“A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.”

“If you have food in your jaws you have solved all questions for the time being.”

“The meaning of life is that it stops.”

“If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything.”

“The meaning of life is that it ends”

“He has the feeling that merely by being alive he is blocking his own way. From this sense of hindrance, in turn, he deduces the proof that he is alive.”

“All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.”

“There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.”

“It is entirely conceivable that life's splendour forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from our view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. This is the essence of magic, which does not create but summonsFranz Kafka, 18 October 1921Es ist sehr gut denkbar, dass die Herrlichkeit des Lebes um jeden und immer in ihrer ganzen Fülle bereitliegt, aber verhängt, in der Tiefe, unsichtbar, sehr weit. Aber sie liegt dort, nicht feindselig, nicht widerwillig, nicht taub. Ruft man sie mit dem richtigen Wort, beim richtigen Namen, dann kommt sie. Das ist das Wesen der Zauberei, die nicht schafft, sondern ruft.Kafkas Tagebücher,18 Oktober 1921”

“Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.”

“You misinterpret everything, even the silence.”

“If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.”