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

— Franz Kafka

All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

All right then, I’ll be mad at you on this score, which incidentally is no great misfortune, as things balance out quite well if there’s a little anger for you lurking in one corner of my heart.

— Franz Kafka

A man might find for a moment that he was unable to work, but that's exactly the right time to remember his past accomplishments and to consider that later on, when the obstacles have been removed, he's bound to work all the harder and more efficiently.

— Franz Kafka

Am I to leave this world as a man who shies away from all conclusions?

— Franz Kafka

And thus it happens that the reader, the closer he comes to the novel's end, the more he wishes he were back in the summer with which it begins, and finally, instead of following the hero onto the cliffs of suicide, joyfully turns back to that summer, content to stay there forever.

— Franz Kafka

A non-writing writer is a monster courting INSA

— Franz Kafka

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.", July 5, 1922]

— Franz Kafka

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

— Franz Kafka