The Defense

... In such circumstances the Defence was naturally in a very ticklish and difficult position. Yet that, too, was intentional. For the Defence was not actually countenanced by the Law, but only tolerated, and there were differences of opinions even on that point, whether the Law could be interpreted to admit such tolerance at all. Strictly speaking, therefore, none of the counsels for the defence was recognised by the Court, all who appeared before the Court as counsels being in reality merely in the position of pettifogging lawyers. That naturally had a very humiliating effect on the whole profession, and the next time K. visited the Law-Court offices he should take a look at the lawyers' room, just for the sake of having seen it once in his life. He would probably be horrified by the kind of people he found assembled there. The very room, itself small and cramped, showed the contempt in which the Court held them. It was lit only by a small skylight, which was so high up that if you wanted to look out, you had to get some colleague to hoist you on his back, and even then the smoke from the chimney close by choked you and blackened your face. To give only one more example of the state the place was in — there had been for more than a year now a hole in the floor, not so big that you could fall through the floor, but big enough to let a man's leg slip through. The lawyers' room was in the very top attic, so that if you stumbled through the hole your leg hung down into the lower attic, into the very corridor where the clients had to wait. It wasn't saying too much if the lawyers called these conditions scandalous. Complaints to the authorities had not the slightest effect, and it was strictly forbidden for the lawyers to make any structural repairs or alterations at their own expense. Still, there was some justification for this attitude on the part of the authorities. They wanted to eliminate defending counsel as much as possible, the whole onus of the Defence must be laid on the accused himself. A reasonable enough point of view, yet ...

—Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925) (trans. W. & E. Muir, rev. Butler 1956)

'laughter is always at our elbows'

... laughter for its own sake is never far away from us; in spite of all the misery of our lives quiet laughter is always, so to speak, at our elbows ...

—Franz Kafka, "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk" (1924) (trans. Willa & Edwin Muir 1948)

'as many as a thousand shoulders'

Our life is very uneasy, every day brings surprises, apprehensions, hopes and terrors, so that it would be impossible for a single individual to bear it all did he not always have by day and night the support of his fellows; but even so it often becomes very difficult; frequently as many as a thousand shoulders are trembling under a burden that was really meant only for one pair.

—Franz Kafka, "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk" (1924) (trans. Willa & Edwin Muir 1948)

Beauty plus pity—

"To take upon us the mystery of things"—what King Lear so wistfully says for himself and for Cordelia—this is also my suggestion for everyone who takes art seriously. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol's "The Greatcoat," or more correctly "The Carrick"); another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka's "The Metamorphosis")—so what? There is no rational answer to "so what." We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.

—Vladimir Nabokov, lecture on Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," Lectures on Literature (1980)

'refuge in movement'

"What a quiet life our family has been leading," said Gregor to himself, and as he sat there motionless staring into the darkness he felt great pride in the fact that he had been able to provide such a life for his parents and sister in such a fine flat. But what if all the quiet, the comfort, the contentment were now to end in horror? To keep himself from being lost in such thoughts Gregor took refuge in movement and crawled up and down the room.

—Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis (1915) (trans. Willa & Edwin Muir 1948)

...like being seasick on dry land.

"Of course I can guess, of course I guessed the first time I saw you, what kind of state you are in. I've had some experience, and I don't mean it as a joke when I tell you it's like being seasick on dry land. It's a condition in which you can't remember the real names of things and so in a great hurry you fling temporary names at them. You do it as fast as you can. But you've hardly turned your back on them before you've forgotten what you called them. A poplar in the fields which you called 'the tower of Babel,' since you either didn't or wouldn't know that it was a poplar, stands waving anonymously again, and so you have to call it 'Noah in his cups.'"

—Franz Kafka, "Conversation with the Supplicant" (1909) (trans. Willa & Edwin Muir 1948)

...a fugitive awareness...

The young man standing opposite me smiled. Then he dropped on his knees and with a dreamy look on his face told me: "There has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive. You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. I have a constant longing, my dear sir, to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me. I feel that then they were calm and beautiful. It must be so, for I often hear people talking about them as though they were."

—Franz Kafka, "Conversation with the Supplicant" (1909) (trans. Willa & Edwin Muir 1948)