More Quotes by Franz Kafka
But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?
sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man the most guilty.
I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.
The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, lost in a forest remote from all human habitation.
I carry the bars within me.
You wouldn't believe the kind of person I could become if you wanted it.
No writer in our time has been more isolated than Kafka, and yet few have achieved communication as well as he did.
This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern.
But sleep? On a night like this? What an idea! Just think of how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.
He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.
