Franz Kafka

There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.

I am thinking of the possibility of writing a book about myself, that is, about this self that has become so difficult and enigmatic to me.

The Messiah will come only when he is no longer needed; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last.

So long as you have not experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are but a troubled guest on the dark earth.

I have had a great deal of experience with people, and I have found that they are all the same, only in different ways.

What do I do? I do not know. I am a machine. I do not think. I do not feel. I do not live. I am a machine.

I am a bad writer, but I am a good person.

The meaning of life is that it stops.

I am like a man who has built a house and then set fire to it.

One must be like a child, always ready to begin again.

I have not been able to write a single word for two days. I am completely empty.

What is the good of a book that does not transport you beyond all experience?

I am a stranger in my own land.

My whole being is a wound.

I am a writer, but I am not a writer. I am a human being.

The chains of tormented mankind are forged from the written paper.

I have always been a lonely person. I have always been alone.

I am not a Jew, I am not a Christian, I am not a German, I am not a Czech. I am nothing.

The greatest cunning of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.

I am a child who has lost his way.