Franz Kafka Quotes

We were expelled from Paradise, but Paradise was not destroyed. In a sense our expulsion from Paradise was a stroke of luck, for had we not been expelled, Paradise would have had to be destroyed.

There will be no proof that I ever was a writer.

There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. One has to go abroad in order to find the home one has lost.

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers is contained in the dog.

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

From the true antagonist, illimitable courage is transmitted to you.

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

Books are a narcotic.

A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.

Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book does not shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place?