Franz Kafka

It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.

The true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but only just above the ground. It seems intended more to make one stumble than to be walked upon.

One must not cheat the public, one must give them what they want.

The animal's blood is the life.

What is the good of a book that does not even make us want to go out into the world and live?

The first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees more and different things than the others.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unhappy.

The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to forests remote from all human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

The fact that there is a world, and that it is so strange, is the greatest wonder.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I am not a human being, but a machine.

What we are looking for is not a way of life, but a way out.

Starting with the wrong foot is the first step towards the right way.

Don't bend; don't water it; don't mend it. Let it burn.

The man who does not learn to live with his own suffering will die of it.

My life is a hesitation before birth.

Sleep is the most innocent creature and the most unfortunate man, who has lost his sleep, the most unfortunate.

Anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can write down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees more and different things than the others; for he is dead in his own lifetime and the real survivor.

I am free and that is why I am lost.

All I am is literature, and I am not able to be anything else.