Franz Kafka

Franz KafkaFranz Kafka (1883-1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer based in Prague, who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic.

Franz Kafka Quotes

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

—Franz Kafka

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

—Franz Kafka

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

—Franz Kafka

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

—Franz Kafka

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

—Franz Kafka

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

—Franz Kafka

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.

—Franz Kafka

The meaning of life is that it stops.

—Franz Kafka

Written kisses don’t reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.

—Franz Kafka

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

—Franz Kafka

I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.

—Franz Kafka

There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe.. but not for us.

—Franz Kafka

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

—Franz Kafka

In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.

—Franz Kafka

In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.

—Franz Kafka

Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you any more.

—Franz Kafka

Books are a narcotic.

—Franz Kafka

All language is but a poor translation.

—Franz Kafka

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

—Franz Kafka

A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.

—Franz Kafka

Kill me, or you are a murderer.

—Franz Kafka

What am I doing here in this endless winter?

—Franz Kafka

I am a cage, in search of a bird.

—Franz Kafka

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

—Franz Kafka

First impressions are always unreliable.

—Franz Kafka

It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.

—Franz Kafka

I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.

—Franz Kafka

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

—Franz Kafka

Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.

—Franz Kafka

I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.

—Franz Kafka