Kafka Metamorphosis Quotes & Sayings

You couldn't see love, or touch it, or taste it, yet it could destroy you and leave you in the dark, chasing after your own destiny. — Alice Hoffman

The physicians belief in the treatment and the patients faith in the physician exert a mutually reinforcing effect; the result is a powerful remedy
that is almost guaranteed to produce an
improvement and sometimes a cure — Petr Skrabanek

But to explore the invisible and to hear the unheard are very different from reviving the dead: Baudelaire is therefore first among seers, the king of poets, a true God. — Arthur Rimbaud

Most animals are like the unfortunate Gregor Samsa after metamorphosis. They are Kafka-creatures, organisms with rich thoughts and emotions but no system for translating what they think into something that they can express to others. — Marc Hauser

I think you've really got to cling to what makes sense to you. Obviously, I'm not a serial murderer in my real life, so that's where you have to delve into and do all the research. But, you have to find something likable in the character. — Jamie Dornan

One night a friend lent me a book of short stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed. I was so surprised. The first line reads, "As Gregor Samsa awoke that morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect ... " When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn't know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing short stories. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gregor's glance then turned to the window. The dreary weather - the
rain drops were falling audibly down on the metal window
ledge - made him quite melancholy. — Franz Kafka

There's no such thing, of course, as an old-fashioned gay guy. They're the most decadent people. — Norm MacDonald

Did he really want this warm room of his, so comfortably fitted with old family furniture, to be transformed into a cave, in which, no doubt, he would be free to crawl about unimpeded in all directions, but only at the price of rapidly and completely forgetting his human past at the same time? — Franz Kafka

I've always gone with Kafka's model of establishing the world from the first line, as in Kafka's famous line from Metamorphosis, "Gregor Samsa woke up from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect" (or beetle or cockroach, depending on the translation). I have to have that first line before I can go further. — Laurie Foos

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka — Franz Kafka

I would say that my parents were supportive of me. — Sanford I. Weill

He who has read Kafka's Metamorphosis and can look into his mirror unflinching may technically be able to read print, but is illiterate in the only sense that matters. — George Steiner

But when at long last he had got his head out over the side of the bed, in mid-air, he became afraid of continuing in this manner, for if he were to fall like that it would take a miracle for him not to sustain a head injury. And consciousness was the last thing he wanted to lose at the present time; he would rather stay in bed. — Franz Kafka

The total ugliness and indifference of the worst features of the human race come out in their driving habits. — Charles Bukowski

If I didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything I would, let him know just what I feel. He'd fall right off his desk! And it's a funny sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because the boss is hard of hearing. — Franz Kafka

Hey, I used to eat at McDonald's: I liked the taste of the food, especially the French fries. — Eric Schlosser

As I write this, I am sixty-four years old, with, I hope, many more years to live and lots more to do. And, by the way, no face work. I know you're thinking, "No kidding." But cosmetic surgery just doesn't work on a man. Were I to take the plunge, no one would ever say, "Whoa, who's that really hot thirty-eight-year-old dude?" They'd say, "Who's that sixty-four-year-old who's been in a fire?" Being — Martin Short

And now you intend to stay here with us in Riva?' asked the burgomaster. 'I do not,' said the hunter with a smile, and to excuse the jest he laid his hand on the burgomaster's knee. 'I am here, more than that I do not know. My boat has no rudder, it is driven by the wind that blows in the nethermost regions of death. — Franz Kafka

But then - I was just following him in reverie over mountain and valley - he jumped with both feet onto the middle of my body. I shuddered with wild pain, utterly uncomprehending. Who was it? A child? A gymnast? A daredevil? A suicide? A tempter? An annihilator? — Franz Kafka

The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune,that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide,lost in a forest remote from all human habitation — Franz Kafka

Robots are like Mars: they need
girls.
Boys won't do;
the memesoup is all wrong. They stomp
when they should kiss
and they're none too keen
on having things shoved inside them ...
It's not a robot
until you put a girl inside. Sometimes
I feel like that.
A junkyard
the Company forgot to put a girl in. — Catherynne M Valente

Kafka regarded the end of "The Metamorphosis"- its composition in interrupted by a business trip- as "unreadable." He also wrote in his diary that he found it"bad," but of course Kafka relished his failure. Failure is precisely what he expected and resolved to accomplish- and he hid behind it. — Franz Kafka