Franz Kafka Writing Quotations

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.

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

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.

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

Writing means revealing oneself to excess.

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

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

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

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.

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.

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.

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.

Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward.

Writing [is] a form of prayer.

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

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.

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.

In a way, I was safe writing

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.

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