Author Quotes
Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian writer of novels and short stories, regarded by critics as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. Kafka strongly influenced genres such as existentialism.
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
— Letter to Oskar Pollak (1904)
From a January 1904 letter to his friend Oskar Pollak. Kafka argues that comfortable books are worthless — only writing that wounds and unsettles is worth reading.
“I am a cage, in search of a bird.”
— The Third Notebook (Aphorisms) (1918)
One of Kafka's Zürau aphorisms, written while recovering from tuberculosis at his sister's farmhouse. The inversion — the cage seeking the bird — captures his lifelong sense of purposeless confinement.
“One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.”
— The Metamorphosis (1915)
The opening line of Kafka's most famous novella. Its matter-of-fact tone in the face of the impossible is the quintessential Kafkaesque move — the horror is not the transformation, but how ordinary everyone treats it.
“There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe … but not for us.”
— Conversation with Max Brod (1920)
Reported by Max Brod in his biography of Kafka. The line is often cited as the most Kafkaesque sentence ever spoken — cosmic possibility paired with personal exclusion.
“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, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
— Diaries (1913)
From Kafka's personal diaries. A rare moment of creative confidence from a writer plagued by self-doubt, urging uncompromising fidelity to one's inner vision.
“By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”
— Diaries (1917)
A surprising note of creative optimism from Kafka. Desire becomes a generative force — what we long for enough, we bring into being.