Top 881 Kafka On The Shore Quotes & Sayings

By the time Kafka was seven or eight years old, he already had a relatively dark view of the world derived from experiences in his own family. This told him that the world was organized in a strictly hierarchical manner and that those on the top were allowed to mete out punishment in any way they chose. They were entitled to leave those on the bottom uninformed about the rules to which they subscribed; they weren't even required to follow their own rules - this is how Kafka described it in his later Letter to My Father.

Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore - Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore! Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.

When I wrote 'Your Republic Is Calling You,' it was Franz Kafka's writing that I had most in mind, and James Joyce's 'Ulysses.' Entirely out of the blue, Kafka's characters receive an order to go somewhere, and when they try to comply, they never quite manage it. Ki-yong in 'Your Republic Is Calling You' is precisely that sort of character.

Franz Kafka is dead. He died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "Come down!" they cried to him. "Come down! Come down!" Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. "I can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "Why?" they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. "Because then you'll stop asking for me."

'Tis always morning somewhere, and aboveThe awakening continents, from shore to shore,Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.

I was first introduced to Kafka's writing during my compulsory army-service basic training. During that period, Kafka's fiction felt hyperrealistic.

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. Variants include "You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore".

Ultimately — or at the limit — in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes. 'The necessary condition for an image is sight,'Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: 'We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.

Kafka is still unrecognized. He thought he was a comic writer.

Kafka: cries of helplessness in twenty powerful volumes.

'Who dares this pair of boots displace, Must meet Bombastes face to face.' Thus do I challenge the human race. Bombastes: So have I heard on Afric's burning shore, A hungry lion give a grievous roar; The grievous roar echo'd along the shore. King: So have I heard on Afric's burning shore Another lion give a grievous roar, And the first lion thought the last a bore.

I heard a story the other night about an editor who visited the Iowa Workshop and, when asked what sorts of books she published, replied, "Classic books." One of the students asked her, "You mean like Kafka?" Apparently she said, "Oh, I don't think I would publish Kafka."

I don't know what the fascination is with 'Jersey Shore,' the show. I grew up going to the Jersey Shore and I think it's an incredible place to vacation. The show, I think people like to see crazy TV, and that's what the fascination is.

Perhaps Kafka laughed when he told stories [. . . ] because one isn't always equal to oneself.

Your self-esteem is a notch below Kafka.

I guess I will say, going back to the Judaism questions, there are mental reflexes or patterns that I think of as Jewish in my own feelings about mysticism and theology.Franz Kafka is someone I very much revere. If I believed in holy texts I'd go to him as a touchstone. Not that I read Kafka all the time at this point. In a way, this is what I most want to talk about and it's the hardest to talk about.

The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences. What other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature and its power is never diminished.

Being a New Jersey native, going down to the shore for my whole life, it's a big thing that out of towners are very much looked down on and there is a real conflict between the locals and the Bennies - people that are out of towners, not from the shore. That's slang going back in the day.

When you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine myriad things with a confused body and mind you might suppose that your mind and nature are permanent. But when you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that there is nothing that has unchanging self.

I felt like I was staring out across an ocean that I was going to have to swim from shore to shore before I could rest again.

I GO DOWN TO THE SHORE I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall— what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do.

A friend of mine that I was in a band with started me on Kafka, which in turn led to Camus and Sartre.

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.

One of the first bills I helped passed was the Shore Protection Fund, which provides a stable source of funding for shore protection, something very important for Monmouth County and the entire Jersey Shore.

When I went to Czechoslovakia under the old Communist regime one day in the '80s, I thought to myself whatever I do, whatever happens to me in Prague I'm not going to use the name Kafka, I'm just not going to do it. I won't do it; it's so easy, everyone else does, I'm not going to. I'll write the first non-Kafka mentioning piece.

The moment Kafka attracts more attenetion than Joseph K., Kafka's posthumous death begins.

These are the lords That have bought titles: men may merchandise Wares, ay and traffic in all commodities From sea to sea, and from shore to shore: But in my thought, of all things that are sold, 'Tis pity honor should be bought for gold: It cuts off all desert.

Would a NASA reality show "Lunar Shore" be more popular than "Jersey Shore?" Civilization's future depends on that answer.

The Good Quality Snob, or wearer of muted tweeds, cut almost exactly the same from year to year, often with a hat of the same material, [is] native to the Boston North Shore, the Chicago North Shore, the North Shore of Long Island, to Westchester County, the Philadelphia Main Line and the Peninsula area of San Francisco.

One of the influences of Kafka over later writers is not so much in the content of his work as in its form.

I can do pretty good work in various short forms, but anything over 1400 words, I'd be of no use. I like to say I'm a river navigator. I need to see the shore behind the shore.

When you watch 'Shark Tank,' everything is about off-shore this, off-shore that.

Few are those among men who have crossed over to the other shore, while the rest of mankind runs along the bank. However those who follow the principles of the well-taught Truth will cross over to the other shore, out of the dominion of Death, hard though it is to escape.

The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate the world....There is naked Nature, inhumanly sincere, wasting no thought on man, nibbling at the cliffy shore where gulls wheel amid the spray.

The pleased sea on a white-breasted shore-- A shore that wears on her alluring brows Rare shells, far brought, the love-gifts of the sea, That blushed a tell-tale.

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we've learned most of what we know. Recently, we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

Obviously I've been reading Kafka for a long long time, since I was really young, and even before I ever read him I knew who he was. I had this weird sense that he was some kind of family. Like Uncle Kafka. Now I really think of him that way, the way we think about an uncle who opened up some path for being in a family that otherwise wouldn't have existed. I think of him that way as a writer and a familial figure.

Faith has a saving connection with Christ. Christ is on the shore, so to speak, holding the rope, and as we lay hold of it with the hand of our confidence, He pulls us to shore; but all good works having no connection with Christ are drifted along down the gulf of fell despair.

If this is what you came for, then I didn't send for you. Kafka (note to himself in journal)

I did my dissertation on Kafka.

In Guinea I could read [Franz] Kafka. I re-discover in him my own discomfort.

(The real brahmin is the one who:) ... has crossed beyond duality ...knows no this shore, other shore, or both ...(is) settled in mind ... without inflowing thoughts ...is without attachment ...endures undisturbed criticism, ill-treatment and bonds, (and is) strong in patience ...(is) without anger, devout, upright, free from craving, disciplined and in his last body ...has experienced the end of his suffering here in this life, who has set down the burden, freed!

If Franz Kafka were alive today he'd be writing about customer service.

Franz Kafka is a huge influence, more than the Grimms. To allow yourself to get into the coal bucket and fly to the sky ... we learned that from Kafka, that you can have a thought and make a body of it in this way.

It is said Somerset Maugham traveled the world with a notebook to learn the essence of life and Kafka sat in a room for the same objective. Yet Kafka came out with a better world-view.

Whoever utters 'Kafkaesque' has neither fathomed nor intuited nor felt the impress of Kafka's devisings. If there is one imperative that ought to accompany any biographical or critical approach, it is that Kafka is not to be mistaken for the Kafkaesque.

Heart is a sea, language is the shore. Whatever is in a sea hits the shore.

I learned my realism from guys like Kafka.

In Czechoslovakia, we consider Kafka a very funny man. A humorist.

Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.

A lot of the stuff Kafka said he thought was hilariously funny.

We have come by curious ways To the Light that holds the days; We have sought in haunts of fear For that all-enfolding sphere: And lo! it was not far, but near. We have found, O foolish-fond, The shore that has no shore beyond. Deep in every heart it lies With its untranscended skies; For what heaven should bend above Hearts that own the heaven of love?

The goal of our life’s effort is to reach the other shore, Nirvana. Prajna paramita, the true wisdom of life, is that in each step of the way, the other shore is actually reached.

Well if you from New Jersey, you always knew that going to Jersey Shore was way different from where you lived at. I live in Newark, and that is 150 percent opposite of Jersey Shore.

When I spend time at North Shore Animal League America, I always feel so sad for the cats, especially the kittens. Once they're at North Shore, they're safe and I know they're going to find homes, but it's that time in between that they're in cages and waiting to find homes that breaks my heart and I feel like their spirits are gone.

Kafka is one of my very favorite writers. Kafka's fictional world is already so complete that trying to follow in his steps is not just pointless, but quite risky, too. What I see myself doing, rather, is writing novels where, in my own way, I dismantle the fictional world of Kafka that itself dismantled the existing novelistic system.

This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern.

Quietly, like a night bird, floating, soaring, wingless. We glide from shore to shore, curving and falling but not quite touching; Earth: a distant memory seen in an instant of repose, crescent shaped, ethereal, beautiful, I wonder which part is home, but I know it doesn't matter... the bond is there in my mind and memory; Earth: a small, bubbly balloon hanging delicately in the nothingness of space.

Prayer is surrender--surr ender to the will of God and cooperation with that will. If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.

Sssh says the ocean Sssh says the small wave at the shore sssh not so violent, not so proud, not so remarkable. Sssh says the surf crowding around the outcrops, washing the shore. Sssh, they say to people, this is our Earth, our eternity.