Bits — of Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a German-speaking writer from Prague. I didn't know about him until recently when I picked up a book on the early life of some of the most prominent authors. I read about Kafka and at once fell in love with his character. Probably, also because I found a couple of things common with him. I then went on to read a book or two of his.

Here is a tiny collection of bits from his work (both fiction and non-fiction) that I loved immensely. Don't be surprised if you find the ideas extremely beautifully shaped in words; or relatable. That's just Kafka being himself!

1

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

2

"I am free and that is why I am lost."

3

"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."

4

"All language is but a poor translation."

5

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us."

6

"By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired."

7

"Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself."

8

"Love is, that you are the knife which I plunge into myself."

9

"Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have."

10

"In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world."

11

"I need solitude for my writing; not like a hermit – that wouldn't be enough – but like a dead man."

12

"You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart."

13

"Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached."

14

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

15

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

16

"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions."

17

"So eager are our people to obliterate the present."

18

"We are as forlorn as children lost in the woods. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours."

19

"People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as nauseatingly miserable beyond repair."

20

"I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things."

21

"I lack all aptitude for family life except, at best, as an observer. I have no family feeling and visitors make me almost feel as though I were maliciously being attacked."

22

"You can choose to be free, but it's the last decision you'll ever make."

23

"Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new beaurocracy."

24

"They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves."

25

"I can love only what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it."

26

"I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became."

27

"My fear is my substance, and probably the best part of me."

28

"No matter how much you keep encouraging someone who is blindfolded to stare through the cloth, he still won't see a thing."

29

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

30

"Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within."

31

"It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary."

32

"What is written is merely the dregs of experience."

33

"It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary."

34

"Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to the misery."

35

"You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you're free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid."