928 Quotes by Franz Kafka

Do not waste your time looking for an obstacle – maybe there is none.

The amount of quiet I need does not exist in the world, from which it follows that no one ought to need so much quiet.

It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet i have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so.

And for a little while he lay still, breathing lightly as if he expected total repose would restore everything to its normal and unquestionable state.

A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a “brief.”

They were offered the choice between becoming kings or the couriers of kings. The way children would, they all wanted to be couriers. Therefore there are only couriers who hurry about the world, shouting to each other – since there are no kings – messages that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to this miserable life of theirs but they dare not because of their oaths of service.

I am a typical example of Western Jew. This means I don’t have a moment of peace, that nothing has come easily to me, not just the present and the future, but even the past, that thing that each man receives as his birth-right: even that I have to conquer, and perhaps that is the hardest task.

But I will write in spite of everything, absolutely; it is my struggle for self-preservation.

Ich schreibe anders als ich rede, ich rede anders als ich denke, ich denke anders als ich denken soll und so geht es weiter bis ins tiefste Dunkel.