Franz Kafka Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Thinking, Darkness

  Franz Kafka (2013). “Letters to Ottla and the Family”, Schocken

• 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.

  Franz Kafka

  Inspirational, Fashion, Truth

  Franz Kafka (1995). “The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories”, Random House LLC

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

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Lawyer, Persons

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

  Franz Kafka

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Franz Kafka (1979). “The Basic Kafka”, p.290, Simon and Schuster

• A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Insanity, Monsters

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

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Men, Solitude

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

  Franz Kafka

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Writing

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

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Sleep, Night

• The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you.

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Effort, Incapacity

  Franz Kafka (1970). “The Trial”

• Writing [is] a form of prayer.

  Franz Kafka

  Prayer, Writing, Form

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

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Voice, Unrest

• Writing means revealing oneself to excess.

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Mean, Excess

  Franz Kafka (2013). “Letters to Felice”, p.156, Schocken

• Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward.

  Franz Kafka

  Sweet, Writing, Rewards

• Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it every moment.

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Diaries, Want

  Franz Kafka (1965). “The Diaries of Franz Kafka”

• The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.

  Franz Kafka

  Powerful, Writing, People

  Franz Kafka (1983). “Explain to me some stories of Kafka: complete texts with explanations”, Gordian Pr Inc

• 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.

  Franz Kafka

  Communication, Writing, Thinking

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

  Franz Kafka

  Home, Writing, Long

• 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.

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Sleep, Mind

  Franz Kafka (2013). “Letters to Felice”, p.593, Schocken

• In a way, I was safe writing

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Safe, Way

• Writing sustains me. But wouldn’t it be better to say it sustains this kind of life? Which doesn't mean life is any better when I don’t write. On the contrary, it is far worse, wholly unbearable, and inevitably ends in madness. This is, of course, only on the assumption that I am a writer even when I don’t write - which is indeed the case; and a non-writing writer is, in fact, a monster courting insanity.

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Mean, Insanity

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

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, People, Understanding

  Franz Kafka (2009). “The Metamorphosis: And Other Stories”, p.140, Schocken

• If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, 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.

  Franz Kafka

  Happiness, Suicide, Book

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