Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward

Pe cine nu mai cheamă, pe acela îl uită cu desăv rșire. N-am vrut să vorbesc despre asta de față cu Frieda. Dar nu e numai uitare, e mai mult dec t at t. Căci...

L’éternité, c’est long … surtout vers la fin.

So then you’re free?’ ‘Yes, I’m free,’ said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom.

It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.

Persons who write a 10,000 word document and call it a brief

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

No sooner said than done – so acts your man of worth.

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.

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

It is as if I were made of stone, as if I were my own tombstone, there is no loophole for doubt or for faith, for love or repugnance, for courage or anxiety, in particular...

Das Negative zu tun, ist uns noch auferlegt, das Positive ist uns schon gegeben.

No people sing with such pure voices as those that live in deepest hell; what we take for the song of angels is their song.

The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.

The meaning of life is that it stops

If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive.

Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That’s why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and...

…youth looks good in anything; unpleasant details lose themselves against the unabating vigour of youth…

El hombre martirizado por sus demonios se venga ciegamente en su prójimo

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

Let me remind you of the old maxim: people under suspicion are better moving than at rest, since at rest they may be sitting in the balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their...

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune,that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we...

The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later...

By your side I’m most quiet and most unquiet, most inhibited and most free.

It puzzled K., at least it puzzled him looking at it from the policemen’s point of view, that they had made him go into the room and left him alone there, where he had ten...

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

From the true antagonist, illimitable courage is transmitted to you

It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgement by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.”[Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922]

Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.

Wenn man einmal das Böse bei sich aufgenommen hat, verlangt es nicht mehr, daß man ihm glaube.

His weariness is that of the gladiator after the combat; his work was the whitewashing of a corner in a state official’s office

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

Who has the gift to recognize beauty, will not live long

I am as I am, and that’s all there is to it, I can hardly take a pair of scissors to myself, and cut out a different person…

Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold, all is good. Once in another world, you must hold your tongue.

A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.

Y, sin embargo, mentiría si dijera que la extraño. Es el hechizo más perfecto y más doloroso. Usted está aquí, igual que yo y con mayor intensidad aún; allí donde yo estoy, está usted, como...

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

“Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible,” she said, “but that alone doesn’t make it true

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

It’s impossible to defend oneself in the absence of goodwill

The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.

People who walk across dark bridges, past saints,with dim, small lights.Clouds which move across gray skiespast churcheswith towers darkened in the dusk.One who leans against granite railinggazing into the evening waters,His hands resting on old...

Evidentemente, soy muy ignorante, la verdad es esa, y es muy triste para mi, pero esto supone una ventaja: El ignorante osa a más cosas. También estoy preparado para soportar todavía un poco la ignorancia...

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

You may object that it is not a trial at all; you are quite right, for it is only a trial if I recognize it as such.