Franz Kafka Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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I would love to go help baby sea turtles back into the ocean after hatching in Mexico.
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I have a suicide impulse.
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The approach of death certainly concentrates the mind.
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When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, inner life in which freedom lives. In which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
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I was always an avid reader of books. My vocabulary, my English are all thanks to that reading habit. Reading keeps me grounded. I came from a very middle class family – poor, in fact.
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The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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Humor has to surprise us; otherwise, it isn't funny. It's a death knell for a writer to be labeled a humorist because then it's not a surprise anymore.
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I was about 11 or 12 when I began to pick up my mother's books.
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The storm came. Lives were washed away. Ancient pains resurfaced. Now it is time for a sea of change.
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I think that God prepared me for Chris's death in some ways, because I've seen other people lose their spouses. I've known for a long time that life isn't fair.
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I don't persuade to suicide.
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Death and I are head to head in a total collision, pure and mutual distaste.
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Travel teaches as much as books.
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My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered.
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At the New York Athletic Club they serve amazing food. People go there, get healthy, and then eat themselves to death - which is, I suppose, the right way to do it.
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When the courts decide that murderers, rapists, and others who maliciously break our social contract deserve health care that most working Americans can't afford, they are condemning good people to death.
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When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing - just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park?
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I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate.
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My hair's a pain in live performance. I'm always inhaling it: I almost choked to death a couple of times.
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Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity - in short, of tyranny - and it is committed to making tyranny universal.
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The moralists of Europe have pretended that beasts have no rights... a doctrine revolting/gross/barbarous... on which a native of the Asiatic uplands could not look without righteous horror.
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If your people don't really believe or respect you, if you don't have the moral authority to rule, then your goose is cooked.
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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.
