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Kafka Quotes

Browse 73 quotes about Kafka.

Kafka Quotes

“When the little mouse, which was loved as none other was in the mouse-world, got into a trap one night and with a shrill scream forfeited its life for the sight of the bacon, all the mice in the district, in their holes were overcome by trembling and shaking; with eyes blinking uncontrollably they gazed at each other one by one, while their tails scraped the ground busily and senselessly. Then they came out, hesitantly, pushing one another, all drawn towards the scene of death. There it lay, the dear little mouse, its neck caught in the deadly iron, the little pink legs drawn up, and now stiff the feeble body that would so well have deserved a scrap of bacon. The parents stood beside it and eyed their child's remains.”

DeathDyingMiceKafkaMouse
Book:The Blue Octavo Notebooks
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“At the same time all the houses round about promptly took part in this silence, and so did the darkness above them, reaching as far as the stars. And the footsteps of invisible passers-by, whose course I had no wish to guess at, the wind that kept on driving against the other side of the street, the gramophone singing behind closed windows in some room - they made themselves heard in this silence, as if they had owned it for ever and ever.”

SilenceMeditationContemplationKafka
Book:Contemplation
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“I just read, the letter, your essays, again ad again, convinced that such pros does not exist merely for its own sake, but serves as a signpost on the road to a human being, a road one keeps following, happier and happier, until arriving at the realization some bright moment that one is not progressing simply running around inside one's own labyrinth, only more nervously, more confused than before.”

LettersKafka
Book:Letters to Milena
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“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.)”

TimeChangeHuman NatureBeingKafka
Book:Parables and Paradoxes
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“If I closely examine what is my ultimate aim, it turns out that I am not really striving to be good and to fulfil the demands of a Supreme Judgement, but rather very much the contrary: I strive to know the whole human and animal community, to recognize their basic predilections, desires, moral ideals, to reduce these to simple rules and as quickly as possible trim my behaviour to these rules in order that I may find favour in the whole world’s eyes; and, indeed (this is the inconsistency), so much favour that in the end I could openly perpetrate the iniquities within me without alienating the universal love in which I am held –the only sinner who won’t be roasted. To sum up, then, my sole concern is the human tribunal, which I wish to deceive, moreover, though without practising any actual deception.”

HumanitySocietyBehaviorJudgmentDiaryKafkaHuman Tribunal
Book:Diaries, 1910-1923
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“After reading Burgum, [Patricia Highsmith] wrote in her cahier that, like Kafka, she felt she was a pessimist, unable to formulate a system in which an individual could believe in God, government or self. Again like Kafka, she looked into the great abyss which separated the spiritual and the material and saw the terrifying emptiness, the hollowness, at the heart of every man, a sense of alienation she felt compelled to explore in her fiction. As her next hero, she would take an architect, 'a young man whose authority is art and therefore himself,' who when he murders, 'feels no guilt or even fear when he thinks of legal retribution'. The more she read of Kafka the more she felt afraid as she came to realise, 'I am so similar to him.”

HeartArtSelfGovernmentSpiritualIndividualBeliefFearFictionAuthorityMurderGuiltEmptinessPessimismAutismAbyssAlienationPessimistSystemRetributionExploreKafkaMaterialHollownessTerrifyingGog
Book:Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι
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“About some books we feel that our reluctance to return to them is the true measure of our admiration. It is hard to suppose that many people go back, from a spontaneous desire, to reread 1984: there is neither reason nor need to, no one forgets it. The usual distinctions between forgotten details and a vivid general impression mean nothing here, for the book is written out of one passionate breath, each word is bent to a severe discipline of meaning, everything is stripped to the bareness of terror. Kafka's The Trial is also a book of terror, but it is a paradigm and to some extent a puzzle, so that one may lose oneself in the rhythm of the paradigm and play with the parts of the puzzle. Kafka's novel persuades us that life is inescapably hazardous and problematic, but the very 'universality' of this idea helps soften its impact: to apprehend the terrible on the plane of metaphysics is to lend it an almost soothing aura.”

NovelMetaphysicsParadigmNovelsLiterary CriticismGeorge OrwellKafka1984OrwellFranz KafkaThe Trial
Book:Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four: Text, Sources, Criticism
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“My conception of a novel is that it ought to be a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement with the author's story of his or her own life. This conception, again, I take from Kafka, who, although he was never transformed into an insect, and although he never had a piece of food (an apple from his family's table!) lodged in his flesh and rotting there, devoted his whole life as a writer to describing his personal struggle with his family, with women, with moral law, with his Jewish heritage, with his Unconscious, with his sense of guilt, and with the modern world. Kafka's work, which grows out of the nighttime dreamworld in Kafka's brain, is *more* autobiographical than any realistic retelling of his daytime experiences at the office or with his family or with a prostitute could have been. What is fiction, after all, if not a kind of purposeful dreaming? The writer works to create a dream that is vivid and has meaning, so that the reader can then vividly dream it and experience meaning. And work like Kafka's, which seems to proceed directly from dream, is therefore an exceptionally pure form of autobiography. There's an important paradox here that I would like to stress: the greater the autobiographical content of a fiction writer's work, the *smaller* its superficial resemblance to the writer's actual life. The deeper the writer digs for meaning, the more the random particulars of the writer's life become *impediments* to deliberate dreaming.”

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Book:Farther Away
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“[A] religious text has depth. The reader of Kafka's texts, however, can feel no such confidence in even the partial recuperation of deeper meaning. As Adorno notes, it is characteristic of Kafka's texts that "words, [and] metaphors in particular, detach themselves and achieve a certain autonomy." The experience of reading Kafka in this sense is the very opposite to theological interpretation: it defeats the religious hope that one might pierce the surface of these autonomous words to reach a level of ultimate meaning. Not without cause does Adorno call Kafka "the parabolist of impenetrability".”

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Author:Peter E. Gordon
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“You told me that Kafka was not a thinker, and that a "genetic" approach to his work would disclose that much of it was only a kind of very imaginative whining. That was during the period when you were going in for wrecking operations, feeling, I suppose, that the integrity of your own mental processes was best maintained by a series of strong, unforgiving attacks. You made quite an impression on everyone, in those days: you ruffled blouse, you long magenta skirt slit to the knee, the dagger thrust into your boot. "Is that a metaphor?" I asked, pointing to the dagger; you shook your head, smiled, said no.”

MetaphorKafka
Author:Donald Barthelme
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“In an enchanting encounter with the myriad books that I met in a cosy book shop today, I couldn't help but get bedazzled with the cornucopia of stories and poetry that lay snuggled in the plethora of shelves at display. You wouldn't believe it dear readers that I heard a real symphony in my ears at that very moment of this august encounter that happened in November. There was no rain today but the bright and sunny spirit of the day was as magical as any rainy day might have made me feel. I do not know about the other people in the book shop, but to me that very moment felt as if I was on cloud nine. Proverbially it felt as if I was listening with a mellifluous ecstasy to the magic of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. At that exact moment when I lay my hands or rather I would say I grabbed my hands on the two books that I have been yearning to read since a long time, I guess the entire Universe paused. Now without having an iota of energy within me to any other further delay in experiencing the magic and in experiencing the mad euphoria that has serenaded my entire being, I take your leave my dearest readers to indulge myself and in the most pleasurable way possible with the words of Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoevsky.”

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Author:Avijeet Das
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“Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony. (Leoparden brechen in den Tempel ein und saufen die Opferkrüge leer; das wiederholt sich immer wieder; schließlich kann man es vorausberechnen, und es wird ein Teil der Zeremonie.)”

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Book:Parables and Paradoxes
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“Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited success to help the reduced forces of Czech dissent to stay nourished (and published). The most pregnant moment of that commitment was one that I managed to miss at the time: I passed an afternoon with Zdenek Mlynar, exiled former secretary of the Czech Communist Party, who in the bleak early 1950s in Moscow had formed a friendship with a young Russian militant with an evident sense of irony named Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev. In 1988 I was arrested in Prague for attending a meeting of one of Vaclav Havel's 'Charter 77' committees. That outwardly exciting experience was interesting precisely because of its almost Zen-like tedium. I had gone to Prague determined to be the first visiting writer not to make use of the name Franz Kafka, but the numbing bureaucracy got the better of me. When I asked why I was being detained, I was told that I had no need to know the reason! Totalitarianism is itself a cliché (as well as a tundra of pulverizing boredom) and it forced the cliché upon me in turn. I did have to mention Kafka in my eventual story. The regime fell not very much later, as I had slightly foreseen in that same piece that it would. (I had happened to notice that the young Czechs arrested with us were not at all frightened by the police, as their older mentors had been and still were, and also that the police themselves were almost fatigued by their job. This was totalitarianism practically yawning itself to death.) A couple of years after that I was overcome to be invited to an official reception in Prague, to thank those who had been consistent friends through the stultifying years of what 'The Party' had so perfectly termed 'normalization.' As with my tiny moment with Nelson Mandela, a whole historic stretch of nothingness and depression, combined with the long and deep insult of having to be pushed around by boring and mediocre people, could be at least partially canceled and annealed by one flash of humor and charm and generosity.”

PoliticsHistoryHumourCommitmentPoliceLoyaltyRussiaCommunismGenerosityIronyBoredomCharmMediocrityBureaucracyExileDissentTotalitarianismAllegianceMoscowArgumentsDetention1968KafkaGorbachevCzechoslovakiaArrestNelson MandelaPrague1950s1970s1980sCliches1988Vaclav HavelBad CrowdsCharter 77Zdenek Mlynar
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Şimdi ise , yüreğine ve aklına aynı şekilde etki eden bir sesle Milena seni çağırıyor. Tabii ki Milena seni tanımıyor, duyduğu bir kaç hikaye ve yazılan bazı mektuplar gözünü kör etmiş. Milena bir deniz gibi, içinde çok fazla su barındıran bir deniz kadar güçlü, tüm gücüyle patlayan fakat bazen yanlış yola girip ölümü ya da uzaktaki ayı takip eden. O seni tanımıyor, gelmeni istemesi gerçeği anlamak istemesinden başka bir şey değil. Senin mevcut halini gördükten sonra gözlerinin açılacağından emin olabilirsin. Bundan çekindiğin için mi gitmek istemiyorsun hassas ruh, korktuğun tam olarak bu değil mi?”

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Book:Letters to Milena
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“The freedom to fail is preserved, as a sort of supreme law, which guarantees escape at every fresh juncture. One is inclined to call this the freedom of the weak person who seeks salvation in defeat. His true uniqueness, his special relation to power, is expressed in the prohibition of victory. All calculations originate and end in impotence.”

ImpotenceKafkaFreedom To Fail
Book:Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice
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“-Ma Kafka parla della tua vita! - disse Avery. - Senza nulla togliere alla tua ammirazione per Rilke, devo dirti che Kafka c'entra con la tua vita molto più di Rilke. Kafka era come noi. Tutti questi scrittori erano esseri umani che cercavano di trovare un senso alla propria vita. E Kafka più di tutti! Kafka aveva paura della morte, aveva problemi con il sesso, aveva problemi con le donne, aveva problemi con il lavoro, aveva problemi con i genitori. E scriveva narrativa per cercare di capirci qualcosa.”

KafkaFranzenDiscomfort Zone
Author:Jonathan Franzen
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“Karl, belki de yurdunda hiç hissetmediği kadar güçlü ve aklı başında hissediyordu kendini gerçekten. Onun yabancı ülkede saygın kişiliklerin karşısında iyi uğruna nasıl savaştığını ve daha zafere ulaşamamış olsa da, son kuşatma için nasıl tam anlamıyla hazır olduğunu annesiyle babası görebilseydi keşke! Onunla ilgili görüşlerini tekrar gözden geçirirler miydi? Onu aralarına oturtup överler miydi? Onlara böylesine sadık olan gözlerinin içine bir kez, bir kez olsun bakarlar mıydı?”

KafkaAmerika
Author:Franz Kafka
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“Zavallı küçük bir göçmen olarak karaya ayak basmış olsaydı, nerede kalırdı acaba? Evet, belki de onu -göçmen yasaları konusundaki bilgisine dayanarak bunu çok olası buluyordu dayı- Birleşik Devletler'e almazlardı bile, artık bir yurdu olmadığını umursamadan eve yollarlardı. Çünkü burada kimse kimseye acımazdı, Karl'ın bu açıdan Amerika hakkında okumuş olduğu şeyler de çok doğruydu; yalnızca şanslı olanlar çevrelerindeki kaygısız yüzler arasında şanslarının gerçekten tadını çıkarıyor gibiydiler.”

KafkaAmerika
Book:Amerika
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“Annesi korkunç bir akşam pencerenin önünde Amerika yolculuğunu haber verdiğinde, asla mektup yazmamaya geri dönülmez biçimde yemin etmişti etmesine, ama deneyimsiz bir gencin ettiği böyle bir yemin buradaki yeni koşullarda kaç yazardı! O zamanlar, Amerika'da iki ay kaldıktan sonra Amerikan ordusunda general olacağına da yemin etse olurdu; gerçekteyse New York dışında bir otelde; tavan arasında bir odada iki serseriyle beraberdi, ayrıca burada gerçekten yerini bulmuş olduğunu da itiraf etmeliydi.”

KafkaAmerika
Book:Amerika
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“Era ahora demasiado libre, podía esperar en el lugar prohibido tanto como quisiera, había conquistado esa libertad como nadie hubiera sabido hacerlo, y nadie tenía derecho a tocarle, ni a expulsarle, incluso incomodarle, pero —y esta convicción era por lo menos tan fuerte como la otra— nada había tampoco más falto de sentido ni más desesperante que dicha libertad, dicha espera y dicha intangibilidad.”

KafkaKafkaesque
Book:The castle
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