A Quote by Franz Kafka

If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

Franz Kafka

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Axe Break Does Frozen Ice Inside Literary Literature Must Read Reading Sea Then Us Wake Why Work

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Franz Kafka
German - Novelist
July 3, 1883 - June 3, 1924

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should 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.

Franz Kafka

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

Franz Kafka

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.

Franz Kafka

A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us.

J. M. Coetzee

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?

Franz Kafka

On the wall next to the table, next to the scones that provided each table with its own circle of lamplight were quotations about reading, her favorite of which was from Kafka: 'A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.

Haven Kimmel

I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it?

Franz Kafka

. . . The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make 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, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation-a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.

Franz Kafka

A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us.

Franz Kafka

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?

Franz Kafka

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

Franz Kafka

As with all great works of literature, 'Of Mice and Men' moves with the inexorability of a huge river, and it pours itself, exhausts itself, in the sea of our unconscious. Having read it, we carry the book inside us forever.

Jay Parini

To break a Navy Seal, you have to kill us. That's why we can make it into our training. That's why we can call ourselves Seals because the only way your gonna break us is to kill us.

Marcus Luttrell

The purpose of a story is to be an axe that breaks up the ice within us.

Franz Kafka

You really have to wonder why we even bother to get up in the morning. I mean, really: Why work? Simply to buy more stuff? That's just not enough. Look at us all. What's the common assumption that got us all from there to here? What makes us deserve the ice cream and running shoes and wool Italian suits we have? I mean, I see all of us trying so hard to acquire so much stuff, but I can't help but feeling that we didn't merit it.

Douglas Coupland

A sea setting us upon the ice has brought us close to danger.

Henry Hudson

A Quote by Franz Kafka

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