Franz Kafka

"So if you find nothing in the corridors open the doors, and if you find nothing behind these doors there are more floors, and if you find nothing up there, don’t worry, just leap up another flight of stairs. As long as you don’t stop climbing, the stairs won’t end, under your climbing feet they will go on growing upwards"

"Shoulder to shoulder, a coordinated movement of the people, their blood no longer confined in the limited circulation of the body but rolling sweetly and yet still returning through the infinite extent of China."

"The limited circle is pure."

"my heart no longer beats but is a tugging muscle,"

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief."

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

"Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers."

"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."

"We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us."

"Books are a narcotic."

"Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self."

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

"Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before."

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

"What is written is merely the dregs of experience."

"Writer speaks a stench."

"Writing is prayer."

"Every word first looks around in every direction before letting itself be written down by me."

"We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes."