928 Quotes by Franz Kafka

We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.

The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.

Kein Schlaf; nur Träume.

Writing is prayer.

Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.

Isolation is a way to know ourselves.

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

Writer speaks a stench.

I am forever fettered to myself [...] and that's what I must try to live with.