Franz Kafka

“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite”

“Wenn Du vor mir stehst und mich ansiehst, was weißt Du von den Schmerzen, die in mir sind und was weiß ich von den Deinen. Und wenn ich mich vor Dir niederwerfen würde und weinen und erzählen, was wüsstest Du von mir mehr als von der Hölle, wenn Dir jemand erzählt, sie ist heiß und fürchterlich. Schon darum sollten wir Menschen voreinander so ehrfürchtig, so nachdenklich, so liebend stehn wie vor dem Eingang zur Hölle.”

“Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”

“In the mountains our throats become free. It's a wonder we don't break into song.”

“Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible, but that alone doesn't make it true.”

“Sometimes I have the feeling that we're in one room with two opposite doors and each of us holds the handle of one door, one of us flicks an eyelash and the other is already behind his door, and now the first one has but to utter a word ad immediately the second one has closed his door behind him and can no longer be seen. He's sure to open the door again for it's a room which perhaps one cannot leave. If only the first one were not precisely like the second, if he were calm, if he would only pretend not to look at the other, if he slowly set the room in order as though it were a room like any other; but instead he does exactly the same as the other at his door, sometimes even both are behind the doors and the the beautiful room is empty.”

“Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before.”

“Hier war es wohl die Müdigkeit inmitten glücklicher Arbeit; etwas, was nach außen hin wie Müdigkeit aussah und eigentlich unzerstörbare Ruhe, unzerstörbarer Frieden war.”

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

“One has just been sent out as a biblical dove, has found nothing green, and slips back into the darkness of the Ark”

“When one has apparently made up one’s mind to spend the evening at home and has donned one’s house-jacket and sat down at the lamplit table after supper and do the particular job or play the particular game on completion of which one is in the habit of going to bed, when the weather out is so unpleasant as to make staying in the obvious choice, when one has been sitting quietly at the table for so long already that one’s leaving must inevitably provoke general astonishment, when the stairwell is in any case in darkness and the street door locked, and when in spite of all this one stands up, suddenly ill at ease, changes one’s coat, reappears immediately in street clothes, announces that one has to go out and after a brief farewell does so, feeling that one has left behind one a degree of irritation commensurate with the abruptness with which one slammed the apartment door, when one then finds oneself in the street possessed of limbs that respond to the quite unexpected freedom one has procured for them with out-of-the-ordinary agility, when in the wake of this one decision one feels capable, deep down, of taking any decision, when one realizes with a greater sense of significance than usual that one has, after all, more ability than one has need easily to effect and endure the most rapid change, and when in this frame of mind one walks the long city streets—then for that evening one has stepped completely outside one’s family, which veers into inessentiality, while one’s own person, rock solid, dark with definition, thighs thrusting rhythmically, assumes it true form. The whole experience is enhanced when at that late hour one looks up a friend to see how he is.”

“I was heading for the city in the south, of which they used to say in our village:‘There are people for you! Just think—they never go to sleep!’‘And why don’t they?’‘Because they’re fools.’‘Don’t fools get tired, then?’‘How could fools get tired?”

“VOR DEM EINGANG ZUR HÖLLEVerlassen sind wir doch wie verirrte Kinder im Walde. Wenn Du vor mir stehst und mich ansiehst, was weißt Du von den Schmerzen, die in mir sind und was weiß ich von den Deinen. Und wenn ich mich vor Dir niederwerfen würde und weinen und erzählen, was wüßtest Du von mir mehr als von der Hölle, wenn Dir jemand erzählt, sie ist heiß und fürchterlich. Schon darum sollten wir Menschen vor einander so ehrfürchtig, so nachdenklich, so liebend stehn wie vor dem Eingang zur Hölle..."- Aus einem Brief Kafkas an Oskar Pollak, 8.11.1903.”

“Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.”

“Hätte Gregor nur mit der Schwester sprechen und ihr für alles danken können, was sie für ihn machen mußte, er hätte ihre Dienste leichter ertragen; so aber litt er darunter.”

“Gleichzeitig aber vergaß er nicht, sich zwischendurch daran zu erinnern, daß viel besser als verzweifelte Entschlüsse ruhige und ruhigste Überlegung sei.”

“It's sometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to encompass so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in one's work here.”

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

“Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.”

“Šta je? Šta je' povikah, još snom prikovan za krevet, i ispružih ruku na gore. Potom ustadoh,još zadugo bez svesti o sadašnjosti, i imah osećaj kao da moram da odgurnem nekoliko ljudi koji su me sputavali; čak i napravih odgovarajuće pokrete rukama, i konačno dođoh do otvorenog prozora.”

“You are free and that is why you are lost.”

“Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me.”

“Writing is prayer.”

“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.”

“there is nothing bad to fear; once you have crossed that threshold, all is well. Another world, and you do not have to speak”

“Jemand musste Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne dass er etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet.”

“Leop­ards break in­to the tem­ple and drink all the sac­ri­fi­cial ves­sels dry; it keeps hap­pen­ing; in the end, it can be cal­cu­lat­ed in ad­vance and is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the rit­ual.”

“I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require an expenditure of so much strength.”

“One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.”

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

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

“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”

“En lugar de un saludo, yo te decía, rápidamente, movido por algo que veía en tu rostro "Me imaginabas distinto." Tú respondías: "Si te he de ser franca, te imaginaba más guapo”

“Y, sin embargo, mentiría si dijera que la extraño. Es el hechizo más perfecto y más doloroso. Usted está aquí, igual que yo y con mayor intensidad aún; allí donde yo estoy, está usted, como yo y más intensamente aún. No bromeo. A veces imagino que usted -que está aquí- extraña mi presencia y pregunta: "¿Pero dónde está? ¿Acaso no escribía diciendo que estaba en Merano? [...] El día es tan corto. Transcurre y termina con usted y fuera de usted sólo hay unas pocas nimiedades. Apenas me queda un rato para escribirle a la verdadera Milena, porque la Milena más verdadera aún ha estado aquí todo el día, en la habitación, en el balcón, en las nubes.”

“El hombre martirizado por sus demonios se venga ciegamente en su prójimo”

“Mientras estaba tendido allí, a un paso de mí yacía un escarabajo, patas arriba, desesperado. No podía enderezarse, me habría gustado ayudarlo, era tan fácil hacerlo, bastaba un paso y un empujoncito para brindarle una ayuda efectiva. Pero lo olvidé a causa de la carta. Además no podía ponerme de pie. Por fin, una lagartija logró que volviera a tomar conciencia de la vida que me rodeaba. Su camino la llevó hasta el escarabajo, que ya estaba totalmente inmóvil. De modo que no fue un accidente, me dije, sino una lucha mortal, el raro espectáculo de la muerte natural de un animal. Pero la lagartija al deslizarse por encima del escarabajo, lo enderezó. Por uno instantes continuó inmóvil, como muerto, pero luego trepó la pared como la cosa más natural. Es probable que eso me haya brindado, de alguna manera, un poco de coraje. Lo cierto es que me puse de pie, bebí leche y le escribí a usted.”

“No, hay algo más para hoy: si usted distrae un solo minuto de su sueño para dedicarlo a la tarea de traducción será como si me estuviera maldiciendo. Porque si algún día se me somete a juicio, no habrá largas investigaciones, bastará con afirmar: él la privó del sueño. Eso bastará para que me condenen, y con razón. De modo que estoy luchando por mí cuando le ruego que no vuelva a hacer algo así.”

“Ocurrió que el cerebro no pudo soportar más las preocupaciones y dolores que le habían sido impuestos. Y entonces dijo: "Me doy por vencido; pero si alguien sigue interesado en mantener la unidad, que me alivie y recoja parte de mi carga; así tiraremos un poco más".”

“He advertido, de pronto, que en realidad no recuerdo su rostro en detalle. Sólo creo ver aún su figura, su vestido, mientras usted se alejaba entre las mesas del café.”

“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”

“I carry the bars within me.”

“So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.”

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

“Maybe innocence makes its way easiest through the elemental chaos of this world...”

“At that point I asked myself: How is it that she is not amazed at herself, that she keeps her lips closed and makes no such remark?”

“That's how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one's hand.”

“There has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive. You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. I have a constant longing, my dear sir, to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me. I feel that they were calm and beautiful. It must be so, for I often hear people talking about them as though they were.”

“I weigh my past against my future, but find them both admirable, cannot give either the preference, and find nothing to grumble at save the injustice of Providence that has so clearly favored me.”

“Cara signora Milena,la giornata è molto breve, con Lei e soltanto con qualche altra inezia è bell'e passata e terminata. E' molto se rimane un po' di tempo per scrivere alla vera Milena perché quella ancor più vera era qui tutto il giorno nella camera, sul balcone, nelle nuvole.”

“They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives...”