928 Quotes by Franz Kafka

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

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.

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.

To write prescriptions is easy, but to come to an understanding with people is hard.

I wanted to escape the unrest, to shut out the voices around me and within me, so I write.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

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.

There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.

Every dog has like me the impulse to question, and I have like every dog the impulse not to answer.