Franz Kafka Quotes on Identity
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* I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.
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There was once a community of scoundrels, that is to say, they were not scoundrels, but ordinary people.
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How much my life has changed, and yet how unchanged it has remained at bottom! When I think back and recall the time when I was still a member of the canine community, sharing in all its preoccupations, a dog among dogs, I find on closer examination that from the very beginning I sensed some discrepancy, some little maladjustment, causing a slight feeling of discomfort which not even the most decorous public functions could eliminate; more, that sometimes, no, not sometimes, but very often, the mere look of some fellow dog of my own circle that I was fond of, the mere look of him, as if I had just caught it for the first time, would fill me with helpless embarrassment and fear, even with despair.
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I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
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If the French were German in their essence, then how the Germans would admire them!
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My fear... is my substance, and probably the best part of me.
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There will be no proof that I ever was a writer
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What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself.
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You are free and that is why you are lost.