Quotessence
Home / Topics / Kafka Quotes

Kafka Quotes

Browse 73 quotes about Kafka.

Kafka Quotes

“Me parece que los dos nos hemos esforzado demasiado —demasiado bruscamente, demasiado puerilmente, y con demasiada experiencia— en obtener algo que no puede ser conquistado sino con, por ejemplo, la calma [...], suavamente, imperceptiblemente. Nosotros hemos empleado el llanto, las uñas, las sacudidas, como un niño que hace jirones el mantel y no logra más que echar por tierra todos los esplendores de la mesa, haciéndosele inaccessibles para siempre.”

KafkaKafkaesque
Book:The castle
Create image

“...for example, if Freud is wrong, as i and many others believe, where does that leave any number of novels and virtually the entire corpus of surrealism, Dada, and certain major forms of expressionism and abstraction, not to mention Richard Strauss' 'Freudian' operas such as Salome and Elektra, and the iconic novels of numerous writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Virginia Woolf? It doesn't render these works less beautiful or pleasurable, necessarily, but it surely dilutes their meaning. They don't owe their entire existence to psychoanalysis. But if they are robbed of a large part of their meaning, can they retain their intellectual importance and validity? Or do they become period pieces? I stress the point because the novels, paintings and operas referred to above have helped to popularise and legitimise a certain view of human nature, one that is, all evidence to the contrary lacking, wrong.”

FreudKafkaWoolfThomas Mann
Book:A Terrible Beauty : The People and Ideas That Shaped the Modern Mind - A History
Create image

“İşte bütün bunlar K.’ya kendisiyle bütün bağların koparıldığı, şimdi doğal olarak her zamankinden daha özgür olduğu ve ona başka zaman yasak olan bu yerde istediği kadar bekleyebileceği hissini verdi; sanki özgürlüğünü kimsenin yapamayacağı bir mücadeleyle elde etmişti ve kimse ona dokunamazdı, onu kovamazdı, hatta onunla konuşamazdı bile; ama bu inanç öylesine güçlüydü ki, sanki aynı zamanda bu özgürlükten, bu bekleyişten, bu dokunulmazlıktan daha anlamsız ve çaresiz bir şey yoktu.”

KafkaFranz KafkaModern ClassicsThe CastleşAto
Author:Franz Kafka
Create image

“Of course, Kafka doesn't see himself as a sort of party. He doesn't even pretend to be revolutionary, whatever his socialist sympathies may be. He knows that all the lines link him to a literary machine of expression for which he is simultaneously the gears, the mechanic, the operator, and the victim. So how will he proceed in this bachelor machine that doesn't make use of, and can't make use of, social critique? How will he make a revolution? He will act on the German language such as it is in Czechoslovakia. Since it is a deterritorialized language in many ways, he will push the deterritorialization farther, not through intensities, reversals and thickenings of the language but through a sobriety that makes language take flight on a straight line, anticipates or produces its segmentations. Expression must sweep up content; the same process must happen to form... It is not a politics of pessimism, nor a literary caricature or a form of science fiction.”

RevolutionKafkaGerman LanguageMinor Literature
Book:Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature
Create image

“Quello che intendo dire è che, se solo potessi raccogliere un po’ di quelle briciole dell’anima, forse potrei comporle in un mosaico completo e capirei finalmente qualcosa, il principio che mi mantiene unito, non credi? Sto parlando di cose che non hanno un nome, cose che nel corso della vita si accumulano sul fondo dell’anima, sedimenti e strati di terriccio. Se mi chiedessi di descriverteli, non saprei da che parte cominciare, non avrei la parole adatte.”

IsraeliKafkaLetter WritingDavid GrossmanChe Tu Sia Per Me Il Coltello
Book:Che tu sia per me il coltello
Create image

“Tom prilikom Kafka mi reče: "Vi opisujete pesnika kao nekog čudesno velikog čoveka čije noge su na zemlji dok mu glava nestaje u oblacima. To je, prirodno, sasvim uobičajena slika u okviru malograđanskih konvencionalnih predstava. To je iluzija, proizišla iz skrivenih želja, a koja nema ničeg zajedničkog sa stvarnošću. U stvarnosti je pesnik uvek manji i slabiji od društvenog proseka. Otuda on oseća teret zemaljskog postojanja intenzivnije i jače nego drugi ljudi. Njegova pesma je za njega samo krik. Umetnost je za umetnika patnja putem koje on sebe oslobađa za novu patnju. On nije nikakav div, nego je tek više ili manje živopisna ptica u kavezu svoje egzistencije.”

PoetKafkaPesnik
Book:Conversations with Kafka
Create image

“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.”

BookExperienceKafkaKnjigaIskustvo
Author:Gustav Janouch
Create image

“Just as the flâneur wanders the Parisian Grands Boulevards, allowing disparate, shocklike experiences to be inscribed on his body even as they resonate in his memory, so the 'assistant' type, in a state of intoxication akin to a mystical trance, wanders through the Kafkan universe. In their blithe and groundless transparency, such figures alone seem capable of bringing to consciousness the alienating character of historical conditions.”

KafkaBenjaminFlâneur
Book:Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life
Create image

“The three of them knew it. She was Kafka’s mistress. Kafka had dreamt her. The three of them knew it. He was Kafka’s friend. Kafka had dreamt him. The three of them knew it. The woman said to the friend, Tonight I want you to have me. The three of them knew it. The man replied: If we sin, Kafka will stop dreaming us. One of them knew it. There was no longer anyone on earth. Kafka said to himself Now the two of them have gone, I’m left alone. I’ll stop dreaming myself.”

DreamDreamsBorgesKafkaJorge Luis BorgesFranz KafkaEin Traum
Author:Jorge Luis Borges
Create image