Franz Kafka

I am a cage, in search of a bird.

Sleep is the most innocent creature and the most, therefore, defenseless. When I sleep, I am a stone in the ground.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

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

The only way to cope with life is to abandon yourself to it completely.

I can choose to be an animal, a plant, a stone, a star; it is all the same to me.

I am dirty, Maximillian, I am dirty. I am dirty and I am going to die.

I have been in many battles and I have been victorious in all of them. But now I am weary and I want to rest.

I need to be alone. I need to think. I need to get rid of this weight.

The man who has not been able to make a name for himself in the world is not a man.

I do not want to be a burden on anyone. I want to be free.

Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.

The greatest joy is to be able to say, 'I have lived.'

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

The truth is always an abyss. One must, in returning, always cross over an abyss.

It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, and I think differently from what I ought to think. And so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

The animal wrestles the human in me.