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

Franz Kafka

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Franz Kafka
Age: 41 †
Born: 1883
Born: July 3
Died: 1924
Died: July 3
Aphorist
Claims Adjuster
Diarist
Fabulist
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet Lawyer
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Translator
Writer
Praha
František Kafka
Kafka
Anything
Able
Willing
Literature
Else

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So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.
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Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... someone might possibly have escaped from their singing but from their silence, certainly never.
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I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it?
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Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
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The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us.
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Evil is the radiation of the human consciousness in certain transitional positions. It is not actually the sensual world that is amere appearance what is so is the evil of it, which, admittedly, is what constitutes the sensual world in our eyes.
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This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.
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The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not.
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A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
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I, however, cannot force myself to use meat drugs to cheat on my loneliness.
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Faith, like a guillotine. As heavy, as light.
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The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows.
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The ulterior motives with which you absorb and assimilate Evil are not your own but those of Evil.
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If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
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Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.
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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.
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I wanted to escape the unrest, to shut out the voices around me and within me, so I write.
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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.
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Going to pieces. To go to pieces so pointlessly and unnecessarily.
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It is strange how little sharpsightedness women possess they only notice whether they please, then whether they arouse pity, and finally, whether you look for compassion from them. That is all come to think of it, it may even be enough, generally speaking.
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