Franz Kafka

“They were offered the choice between becoming kings or the couriers of kings. The way children would, they all wanted to be couriers. Therefore there are only couriers who hurry about the world, shouting to each other - since there are no kings - messages that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to this miserable life of theirs but they dare not because of their oaths of service. ”

“Even years afterward I suffered from the tormenting fancy that the huge man, my father, the ultimate authority, would come almost for no reason at all and take me out of bed in the night and carry me out onto the pavlatche, and that consequently I meant absolutely nothing as far as he was concerned.”

“Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night.”

“Love is a drama of contradictions.”

“I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.”

“Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause. Everything that is not literature bores me and I hate it. 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.”

“What am I doing here in this endless winter?”

“I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.”

“san otkriva stvarnost za kojom predstava zaostaje.strashno potiche od zhivota – potresno od umetnosti.”

“There they lay, but not in the forgetfulness of the previous night. She was seeking and he was seeking, they raged and contorted their faces and bored their heads into each others bosom in the urgency of seeking something, and their embraces and their tossing limbs did not avail to make them forget, but only reminded them of what they sought”

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

“Ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.”

“Kill me, or you are a murderer.”

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

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

“What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.”

“Es perfectamente imaginable que el esplendor de la vida está dispuesto, siempre en toda plenitud, alrededor de cada uno, pero cubierto de un velo, en las profundidades, invisible muy lejos. Sin embargo está ahí, no hostil, no a disgusto, no sordo, viene si uno lo llama con la palabra correcta, por su nombre correcto, Es la esencia de la magia, que no crea, sino llama.”

“Evil is whatever distracts.”

“People keep themselves at a tolerable height above an infernal abyss toward which they gravitate only by putting out all their strength and lovingly helping one another. They are tied together by ropes, and it's bad enough when the ropes around an individual loosen and he drops somewhat lower than the others into empty space; ghastly when the ropes break and he falls. That's why we should cling to the others.”

“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 jot down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different and more things than the others; after all, he is dead in his own lifetime and the real survivor.”

“Yet Gregor's sisterwas playing so beautifully. Her face was leant to one side,following the lines of music with a careful and melancholyexpression. Gregor crawled a little further forward, keeping hishead close to the ground so that he could meet her eyes if thechance came.”

“He is a free and secure citizen of the world because he is on a chain that is long enough to allow him access to all parts of the earth, and yet not so long that he could be swept over the edge of it.”

“No one can crave what truly harms him.”

“leoparzi patrund in Templu si beau din vasele de sacrificiu. evenimentul are loc din nou si din nou. pana la urma devine predictibil. devine parte a ceremoniei.”

“He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.”

“Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.”

“But Gregor understood easily that it was not only consideration for him which prevented their moving, for he could easily have been transported in a suitable crate with a few air holes; what mainly prevented the family from moving was their complete hopelessness and the thought that they had been struck by a misfortune as none of their relatives and acquaintances had ever been hit.”

“Düz bir yolda yürüyor olsaydın, tüm ilerleme isteğine rağmen hala gerisin geriye gitseydin, o zaman bu çaresiz bir durum olurdu; ama sen dik, senin de aşağıdan gördüğün gibi dik bir yamacı tırmandığına göre, adımlarının geriye doğru kayması, bulunduğun yerin durumundan ileri gelebilir, o zaman da umutsuzluğa kapılmana gerek yoktur.”

“Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.”

“He had always believed that his father had not been able to save a penny from the business, at least his father had never told him anything to the contrary, and Gregor, for his part, had never asked him any questions. In those days Gregor's sole concern had been to do everything in his power to make the family forget as quickly as possible the business disaster which had plunged everyone into a state of total despair. And so he had begun to work with special ardor and had risen almost overnight from stock clerk to traveling salesman, which of course had opened up very different money-making possibilities, and in no time his successes on the job were transformed, by means of commissions, into hard cash that could be plunked down on the table at home in front of his astonished and delighted family. Those had been the wonderful times, and they had never returned, at least not with the same glory, although later on Gregor earned enough money to meet the expenses of the entire family and actually did so. They had just gotten used to it, the family as well as Gregor, the money was received with thanks and given with pleasure, but no special feeling of warmth went with it any more. ”

“The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.”

“If they were shocked, then Gregor had no further responsibility and could be calm. But if they took everything calmly, he he, too, had no reason to get excited and could, if he hurried, actually be at the station by eight o'clock.”

“His biggest misgiving came from his concern about the loud crash that was bound to occur and would probably create, if not terror, at least anxiety behind all the doors. But that would have to be risked.”

“He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.”

“My grandfather used to say: Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that -not to mention accidents- even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.”

“The limited circle is pure.”

“First impressions are always unreliable.”

“Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope--but not for us.”

“Es gibt unendlich viel Hoffnung, nur nicht für uns.”

“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.”

“We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”

“The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master’s whiplash.”

“Precisamos de livros que nos afetam como um desastre, que nos magoam profundamente, como a morte de alguém que amamos mais do que a nós mesmos. ”

“I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.”

“Du kannst jemanden, der die Augen verbunden hat, noch so sehr aufmuntern, durch das Tuch zu starren, er wird doch niemals etwas sehen; erst wenn man ihm das Tuch abnimmt, kann er sehen.”

“The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.”

“and in that recurring dream, I found myself trapped in some sort of gigantic game of which I was unfamiliar with the rules; lost in a labyrinthine town of dark and damp, criss-crossing streets, ambiguous characters of uncertain authority having no idea of why I was there nor what I had to do, and where the first sign of the beginning of understanding was the wish to die.”

“Faith, like a guillotine. As heavy, as light.”

“The man in ecstasy and the man drowning - both throw up their arms. The first to signify harmony, the second to signify strife with the elements.”

“من غير الضرورى أن تخرج من بيتك، لازم طاولتك و اصغ، بل دع الإصغاء و اكتفِ بالانتظار، بل دع الإنتظار و اكتفِ بالصمت و العزلة. فسوف يحضر العالم واهباً نفسه لك كى ترفع عنه أقنعته، و منتشياً، سوف يتلوّى أمامك”