"The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support."

"Guilt is never to be doubted."

"Sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless manthe most guilty."

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

"I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe."

"It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical."

"If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth."

"Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists."

"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."

"I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness."

"The existence of the writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obviously taken flight from the real ego, but not improved itself, only become a writer."

"Writer speaks a stench."

"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 sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace."

"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."

"One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory."

"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 has been removed, he's bound to work all the harder and more efficiently."

"One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so."

"I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe."

"One idiot is one idiot. Two idiots are two idiots. Ten thousand idiots are a political party."

"Incidentally, it's easy to write prescriptions, but difficult to come to an understanding with people."

"My 'fear' is my substance, and probably the best part of me."

"You have given me a gift such as I never even dreamt of finding in this life."

"I have no memory for things I have learned, nor things I have read, nor things experienced or heard, neither for people nor events; I feel that I have experienced nothing, learned nothing, that I actually know less than the average schoolboy, and that what I do know is superficial, and that every second question is beyond me. I am incapable of thinking deliberately; my thoughts run into a wall. I can grasp the essence of things in isolation, but I am quite incapable of coherent, unbroken thinking. I can't even tell a story properly; in fact, I can scarcely talk."

"He has the feeling that merely by being alive he is blocking his own way. From this sense of hindrance, in turn, he deduces the proof that he is alive."

"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."

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

"You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart, imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state."

"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 or in general, only a vague hope lives on, but no better than the inscriptions on tombstones."

"By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself."

"What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness."

"A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us."

"I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you."

"The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings."

"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..."

"But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?"

"I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require an expenditure of so much strength."

"How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world."

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

"Intrusive, thoughtless people!" said K. as he turned back into the room. The supervisor may have agreed with him, at least K. thought that was what he saw from the corner of his eye. But it was just as possible that he had not even been listening as he had his hand pressed firmly down on the table and seemed to be comparing the length of his fingers."

"Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe."

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

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

"Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so."

"Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."

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

"People label themselves with all sorts of adjectives. I can only pronounce myself as 'nauseatingly miserable beyond repair'."

"It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet."

"He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn't yet lived."

"I am so miserable, there are so many questions, I can see no way out and am so wretched and feeble that I could lie forever on the sofa and keep opening and closing my eyes without knowing the difference."

"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back."