Franz Kafka

Quotes

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?” ― Franz Kafka
“If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it? Good God, we also would be happy if we had no books and such books that make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us. 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 ax for the frozen sea within us.” ― Franz Kafka
“He has a terrible fear of dying because he has not yet lived… . What is essential in life is only to forgo complacency, to move into the house instead of admiring it and hanging garlands around it… . But why do such nights leave one always with the refrain: I could live and I do not live?” — Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family and Editors