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If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?

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
Reading
Read
Doe
Hammering
Book
Skull
Fist
Skulls
Fists
Wake

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I am a retiring, silent, unsociable, and discontent person.
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There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.
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Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.
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I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.
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I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.
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From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you.
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It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.
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I passed by the brothel as though past the house of a beloved.
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