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


Letter to Oskar Pollak [January 27, 1904]

Franz Kafka Quotes

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.... We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply,...

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.... We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply,...

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.... We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply,...

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.... We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply,...