Author: Franz Kafka

Cited by

• Kathi Diamant (1)
  • IN: Kafka's Last Love (2000) Non-Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: I am a memory come alive. Have the inability to sleep...
    FROM: Diaries, (1948), Book, Czech Republic
• Marc and Yarri Donna Lucht (1)
  • IN: Kafka's Creatures: Animals, Hybrids, and other Fantastic Beasts (2010) Non-Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: A race began in the woods. The whole place was full of animals. I tried ot establish order.
    FROM: Letter to His Father, (1952), Book, Czech Republic
• James Meek (1)
  • IN: The Heart Broke In (2012) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: To marry, to start a family, to accept all the children that come, and to help them in this insecure world, is the best that a man can do.
    FROM: Letter to my Father, (1952), Letter, Czech Republic
• Ian McEwan (1)
  • IN: The Innocent (1990) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: My labours on the Castle Keep were also made harder, and unnecessarily so (unecessarily in that the burrow derived no real benefit from those labours) by the fact that just at the place where, according to my calculations, the Castle Keep should be, the soil was very loose and sandy and had literally to be hammered vaulted chamber. But for such tasks, the only tool I possess is my forehead. So I had to run with my forehead thousands and thousands of times, for whole days and nightsm against the ground, and I was glad when the blood came, for that was a proof that the walls were beginning to harden; and in that way, as everybody must admit, I richly paid for my Castle Keep.
    FROM: The Burrow (translated by Willa and Edwin Muir), (1933), Short story, Czech Republic
• Zadie Smith (1)
  • IN: The Autograph Man (2002) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Naturally things cannot in reality fit together the way the evidence does in my letter; life is more than a Chinese puzzle.
    FROM: letter to his father, (1952), Letter, Czech Republic
• Charles Stross (1)
  • IN: Glasshouse (2006) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: "This apparatus," said the Officer, grasping a connecting road and leaning against it, "is our previous Commandant's invention... Have you heard of our previous Commandant? No? Well, I'm not claiming too much when I say that the organization of the entire penal colony is his work. We, his friends, already knew at the time of his death that the administration of the colony was so self-contained that even if his successor had a thousand new plans in mind he would not be able to alter anything of the old plan, at least not for several years... It's a shame that you didn't know the old Commandant!"
    FROM: In the Penal Colony, (1919), Short Story, Czech Republic
• Michal Ajvaz (1)
  • IN: The Golden Age (2001) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: The whole thing looks senseless enought, but in its own way perfectly finished.
    FROM: The Cares of a Family Man, (1919), Short story, Czech Republic
• Will Self (1)
  • IN: Great Apes (1997) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: When I come home late at night from banquets, form social gatherings...
    FROM: A Report to the Academy, (1917), Short story, Czech Republic
• Rabih Alameddine (1)
  • IN: An Unnecessary Woman (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.
    FROM: Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings, (1952), Book, Czech Republic
• Karen Joy Fowler (1)
  • IN: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: ...Your experience as apes, gentlemen -- to the extent that you have something of that sort behind you -- cannot be more distant from you than mine is from me. But it tickles at the heels of everyone who walks here on earth, the small chimpanzee as well as the great Achilles.
    FROM: A Report for an Academy, (1917), Short story, Czech Republic
• Geoff Dyer (1)
  • IN: White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World (2016) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: There remained the inexplicable mass of rock. The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.
    FROM: Prometheus, (1931), Short story, Czech Republic
• Jesse Ball (1)
  • IN: The Village on Horseback: Prose and Verse, 2003-2008 (2011) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: They were given the choice of becoming kings or kings’ messengers. As is the way with children, they all wanted to be messengers. That is why there are only messengers, racing through the world and, since there are no kings, calling out to each other the messages that have now become meaningless.
    FROM: The Blue Octavo Notebooks, (1948), Book, Czech Republic
• Joy Williams (1)
  • IN: Breaking and Entering (1988) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Then the strangest questions are asked, which no human being could answer: Why there is only one such animal; why I rather than anybody else should own it, whether there was ever an animal like it before and what would happen if it died, whether it feels lonely, why it has no children, what it is called, etc.
    FROM: A Crossbreed, (1931), Short story, Czech Republic
• Michael Kumpfmuller (1)
  • IN: The Glory of Life (2011) Fiction, German
    EPIGRAPH: We may well imagine that the glory of life lies around everyone, and always in its full richness, but obscured, down in the depths, invisible and far away. There it lies, however, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you use the right word, calling it by its right name, it will come. That is the essence of the magic that does not create but calls.
    FROM: Diaries, (1921), Book, Czech Republic
• Mark Lawson (1)
  • IN: The Allegations (2016) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: "You are presumably very surprised at the events of this morning?" asked the Inspector.
    FROM: The Trial, (1925), Novel, Czech Republic
• Steve Toltz (1)
  • IN: Quicksand (2015) Fiction, Australian
    EPIGRAPH: Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope - but not for us.
    FROM: Conversation with Max Brod, (1920), Conversation, Czech Republic
• Moacyr Scliar (1)
  • IN: Kakfa's Leopards (2000) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: Leopards break into the temple and drin up the offering in the chalices; this happens again and again; finally, one can predict their action in advance and it becomes part of the ceremony.
    FROM: The Zürau Aphorisms, (1931), Book, Czech Republic
• Porochista Khakpour (1)
  • IN: The Last Illusion (2014) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: A cage went in search of a bird.
    FROM: The Zürau Aphorisms, (1931), Book, Czech Republic
• David Foenkinos (1)
  • IN: Charlotte (2014) Fiction, French
    EPIGRAPH: Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate.
    FROM: Diary, (1949), Book, Germany
• Nan Cuba (1)
  • IN: Body and Bread (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: No one pushes his way through here, certainly not someone with a message from a dead man. But you sit at window and dream of that message when evening comes.
    FROM: "Imperial Message", (1930), Short Story, Czech Republic
• Roberto Bolaño (1)
  • IN: The Insufferable Gaucho (2003) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: So perhaps we shall not miss so very much after all.
    FROM: Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk, (1924), Short Story, Germany/Austria
• Tom Robbins (1)
  • IN: Skinny Legs and All (1990) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The Messiah will only come when he is no longer needed
    FROM: Parables and Paradoxes, (1961), Book, Austria
• T. C. Boyle (1)
  • IN: Descent of Man (1974) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: I could never have achieved what I have done had I been stubbornly set on clinging to my origins... In fact, to give up being stubborn was the supreme commandment I laid upon myself; free age as I was, I submitted myself to that yoke.
    FROM: "A Report to an Academy", (1917), Short Story, Czech-Republic
• Chaim Potok (1)
  • IN: The Promise (1969) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? Good God, we would 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.
    FROM: Letter to Oskar Pollak, (1904), Letter, Germany