Franz Kafka

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Writing #Thinking #Darkness

“I am a cage, in search of a bird.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Bird #Cages #Chaos

“By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Art #Believe #Creativity

“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.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Inspirational #Life #Wisdom

“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Inspirational #Book #Reading

“Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Inspiring #Freedom #Autism

“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Freedom #Healing #Goal

“I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Inspirational #Dream #Thinking

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Youth #Capacity

“This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Tears #Pieces #World

“I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more”
-- Franz Kafka

#Dream #Faces #Arms

“All language is but a poor translation.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Language #Poor #Translations

“The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Fighting #Swimming #Order

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Inspirational #Fashion #Truth

“The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Ice #Purpose #Stories

“We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Suicide #Book #Grieving

“I never wish to be easily defined.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Wish

“I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Problem #Solve

“You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Heart #Confusion #Quiet

“I can't feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Spring #Dancing #Storm

“If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Reading #Ice #Sea

“Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Hate #Obsession #Intense

“One of the most effective means of seduction that Evil has is the challenge to struggle. It is like the struggle with women, whichends in bed. A married man's true deviations from the path of virtue are, rightly understood, never gay.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Women #Struggle #Mean

“All science is methodolgy with regard to the Absolute. Therefore, there need be no fear of the unequivocally methodological. It isa husk, but not more than everything except the One.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Science #No Fear

“So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Food #Long #Mouths

“Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Book #Keys #Castles

“It isn't necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Home #Waiting #World

“I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Writing #Men #Solitude

“Man cannot live without a continuous confidence in something indestructible within himself.”
-- Franz Kafka

#Men

“Leop­ards break in­to the tem­ple and drink all the sac­ri­fi­cial ves­sels dry; it keeps hap­pen­ing; in the end, it can be cal­cu­lat­ed in ad­vance and is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the rit­ual.”
-- Franz Kafka