I am witnessing your incomprehensible stubbornness, which makes me lose any and all desire to speak up for you in any way whatsoever.
— Franz Kafka
Isolation is a way to know ourselves.
— Franz Kafka
The moon shone down on everything with that simplicity and serenity which no other light possesses.
— Franz Kafka - The Trial
There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.
— Franz Kafka
I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.
— Franz Kafka
This inescapable duty to observe oneself: if someone else is observing me, naturally I have to observe myself too; if none observe me, I have to observe myself all the closer.
— Franz Kafka
Whatever I touch crumbles to pieces.
But how would things go if now all traquillity, all prosperity, all contentment should come to a horrible end?
— Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis
The bliss of murder! The relief, the soaring ecstasy from the shedding of another’s blood! Wese, old nightbird, friend, alehouse crony, you are oozing away into the dark earth below the street. Why aren’t you simply a bladder of blood so that I could stamp on you and make you vanish into nothingness? Not all we want comes true, not all the dreams that blossomed have borne fruit, your solid remains lie here, already indifferent to every kick. What’s the good of the dumb question you are asking?
— Franz Kafka, A Fratricide
People who live alone have no responsibility in the evenings. One fears a number of things — that one’s body could vanish, that human beings may really be what they appear to be at twilight, that one might not be allowed to walk without a stick, that it might be a good idea to go to church and pray at the top of one’s voice in order to be looked at and acquire a body.
— Franz Kafka, Description of a Struggle
You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.
— Franz Kafka
