100 Quotes About Kafka

That’s right, Lucy, that’s right,’ he said, overwhelmed by joy. ‘There’s infinite hope, infinite hope, all the hope in the world. Evenfor us.

He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.

You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.

Human nature, essentially changeable, unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it rends everything asunder, the wall, the bonds and its very self.(Das menschliche Wesen, leichtfertig in seinem Grund, von der Natur des auffliegenden Staubes, verträgt keine Fesselung; fesselt es sich selbst, wird es bald wahnsinnig an den Fesseln zu rütteln anfangen und Mauer, Kette und sich selbst in alle Himmelsrichtungen zerreißen.)

For humans the idea of freedom is all too often a means of deceiving themselves. And although freedom is among the most exalted of feelings, so is the illusion of freedom among the most exalted of illusions.

Art is not religion, 'it doesn't even lead to religion.' But in the time of distress which is ours, the time when the gods are missing, the time of absence and exile, art is justified, for it is the intimacy of this distress: the effort to make manifest, through the image, the error of the imaginary, and eventually the ungraspable, forgotten truth which hides behind the error.

To je zabluda. Knjiga ne može da zameni svet. To je nemogućno. U životu sve ima svoj smisao i svoj zadatak koji ne mogu bez ostatka biti ispunjeni nečim drugim. Nije mogućno, na primer, proživeti nešto posredstvom nekog zamenika. Tako je i sa svetom i knjigom. Pokušavamo da život zatvorimo u knjige kao pticu pevačicu u kavez. Ali, u tome ne uspevamo. Naprotiv! Čovek od knjiških apstrakcija ne izgrađuje ništa drugo nego sistem u vidu kaveza za sebe.

It is not, however, only the word, it is also the thing, in all its infinite complexity, that he [Kafka] articulates with unrivaled courage and clarity. For, since he fears power in any form, since the real aim of his life is to withdraw from it, in whatever form it may appear, he detects it, identifies it, names it, and creates figures of it in every instance where others would accept it as being nothing out of the ordinary.

Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment.