Writing Quotes by Franz Kafka

“I write to close my eyes.”

— Franz Kafka

Writer speaks a stench.

— Franz Kafka

Writing [is] a form of prayer.

— Franz Kafka

Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward.

— Franz Kafka

“Writing is a prayer.”

— Franz Kafka

In a way, I was safe writing

— Franz Kafka

“Writing is prayer.”

— Franz Kafka

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

— Franz Kafka

What is written is merely the dregs of experience.

— Franz Kafka

A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a "brief."

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

There will be no proof that I ever was a writer.

— Franz Kafka

Writing means revealing oneself to excess.

— Franz Kafka

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

— Franz Kafka

I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into…

— Franz Kafka

I wanted to escape the unrest, to shut out the voices around me and within me, so I write.

— Franz Kafka

“My writing was all about you; all I did there, after all, was to bemoan what I could not bemoan upon your…

— Franz Kafka

I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.

— Franz Kafka

To write prescriptions is easy, but to come to an understanding with people is hard.

— Franz Kafka

“You've seen yourself how difficult the writing is to decipher with your eyes, but our man deciphers it with his wounds.”

— Franz Kafka

Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be…

— Franz Kafka

Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from…

— Franz Kafka

“But fundamentally the reason for my not writing is the vague feeling that I have so much and such extremely important things…

— Franz Kafka

The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus…

— Franz Kafka

“This afternoon the pain occasioned by my loneliness came upon me so piercingly and intensely that I became aware that the strength…

— Franz Kafka

What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is…

— Franz Kafka

The existence of the writer is an argument against the existence of the soul, for the soul has obviously taken flight from…

— Franz Kafka

The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company…

— Franz Kafka

Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I…

— Franz Kafka

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather,…

— Franz Kafka

“Perhaps there is another kind of writing, I only know this one, in the night, when anxiety does not let me sleep,…

— Franz Kafka

“How many words grace the pages of this book! They are supposed to bestir memory. As if words could remember! For words…

— Franz Kafka

“You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write…

— Franz Kafka

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we…

— Franz Kafka

Writing sustains me. But wouldn’t it be better to say it sustains this kind of life? Which doesn't mean life is any…

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

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

— Franz Kafka

“That is a very poor career, but only a poor career give the world the light that an imperfect, but pretty good…

— Franz Kafka

The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You…

— Franz Kafka

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought…

— Franz Kafka