Quote

Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.

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
Everything
Quite
Fast
Carries
Mean
Fact
Ears
Carrie
Pricks
Even
Everyone
Quiet
Round
Fastened
Means
Wall
Mirror
Rattling
Sense
Room
Rounds
Listens
Facts
Rooms
Instance
Hears
Night
Inside
Mirrors
Firmly
Someone
Walks
Hearing
Proved

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There is a down-and-outness under true knowledge and a childlike happy arising from it.
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Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.
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Religions get lost as people do.
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German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it’s almost like a meeting.
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Writers speak stench.
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April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.
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God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.
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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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This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.
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As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
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The limited circle is pure.
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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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The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.
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Books are a narcotic.
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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.
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If this is what you came for, then I didn't send for you. Kafka (note to himself in journal)
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All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.
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