Reiner Stach > Quotes

“It seems absurd for a man of twenty-eight to renounce the pleasures of life, doing violence to his nature by a pure act of will. An untold number had done this before him for religious reasons, but Kafka had based his renunciation on nothing but a self-image. He claimed that for better or worse he was what he was, and that therefore much was out of the question for him”
― Reiner Stach, Kafka: Die frühen Jahre

“Kafka knew precisely what he did *not* want: he did not even consider becoming an attorney or using his linguistic gifts to earn a living. Having his afternoons free was more important to him than the prospects of bourgeois prosperity [...] He often appeared passive and overly despondent, yet he stuck to his avoidance schemes even when they posed critical challenges to his psyche. It was as though he were carrying a compass that pointed out to him nothing but the *wrong* direction”
― Reiner Stach, Kafka: Die frühen Jahre

“Kafka experienced it at the movies and in Yitzhak Löwy’s burlesque theater. And yet he made slapstick the medium of a chilling message: We fidget not because we are alive but because we get crushed the moment we stop.”
― Reiner Stach, Kafka: The Decisive Years