The Metamorphosis And Other Stories Quotes
"How the wood of their spokes and shafts creaked in the summer heat!"
"We were singing faster than the train was travelling, we swung our arms because our voices were not enough."
"I heard a sound in his mouth like teeth snapping together."
"And the footsteps of invisible passers-by, whose course I had no wish to guess at, the wind that kept on driving against the other side of the street, the gramophone singing behind closed windows in some room—they made themselves heard in this silence, as if they had owned it for ever and ever."
"But before this smile had ended, I turned away filled with sudden shame."
"After all, I understood them so well because they had been my first city acquaintances."
"‘Unmasked!’ I said, tapping him lightly on the shoulder."
"If in the evening you seem to have decided once and for all to stay at home...then for this evening, you have broken utterly from your family."
"But even if it works, with every false move...the whole thing, the easy and the difficult, will come to a halt."
"I don’t know...I really don’t know. If no one comes, well then, no one comes."
"It seems so hard to remain a bachelor; as an old man, keeping your dignity with difficulty."
"It is possible that some people are sorry for me, but I don’t see any sign of it."
"What will we do in these spring days that are arriving so fast?"
"Just see how persuasive the air is after the thunderstorm!"
"When one is going for a stroll along a lane at night...we won’t attack him."
"I am standing on the platform of the tram, utterly uncertain of my status in this world."
"When I see dresses with a great many pleats and gathers...I often think that they won’t stay like that for long."
"If I encounter a pretty girl and invite her: ‘Be nice, come along with me,' and she walks past without speaking."
"The celebrity that comes from being acknowledged as the best rider in the country gives us too much pleasure."
"Anyone whose life is lonely...he will not carry on for long without a window on to the street."
"Oh to be a Red Indian, ready in an instant, riding a swift horse, aslant in the air."
"For we are like tree-trunks in the snow. Seemingly they are laid on flat."
"When it had already become unbearable...I turned once again and far in the room once again I found a new goal in the depths of the mirror."
"‘What has happened to me?’ he thought. It was not a dream."
"The actual script encircles the body only in a narrow girdle; the rest of the body is intended for decoration."
"This machine is an invention of our old commandant."
"I have been appointed judge here in the penal colony."
"The machine is very complex; something is bound to snap or break now and again."
"It would be pointless to tell him. He will feel it in his own flesh."
"Every court is made up of many persons and is also subject to courts higher than themselves."
"The Harrow corresponds to the shape of a human being."
"I am their sole champion, and at the same time the sole champion of the old commandant’s legacy."
"How different the execution was in earlier times! A day before the execution the entire valley was already overflowing with people; they all came just to watch."
"Today the machine can no longer manage to force a sigh out of the condemned man stronger than the gag can stifle."
"You overestimate my influence; the commandant has read my letter of recommendation; he knows I am not an expert in criminal procedure."
"If his view of this procedure is as certain as you believe it is, then I fear the end of this procedure is at hand without any need of my modest aid."
"But now I ask you: is such a life’s work’—he pointed at the machine—‘to be ruined on account of this commandant and the ladies who influence him?"
"‘Do you see the disgrace?’ But the traveller was silent."
"‘Be just!’ it says. Surely you can read it now."
"‘Here rests the old commandant; his followers, who may not be named today, have dug him this grave and raised this stone."
"But as I am now, I am the outcome of my upbringing by you and my docility."
"The whole thing is not an isolated phenomenon, of course; the circumstances are similar for a large part of this transitional generation."
"You have to believe, as I do, that you are not to blame."
"This is how you habitually twist your undoubted blamelessness into an unjust reproach against others."
"An exemplary life. If your Judaism had been stronger, your example would have been more compelling."
"You were closer to the mark with your dislike of my writing and of what, unbeknown to you, was connected with it."
"I poured out my complaints there only because I couldn’t pour them out on your breast."
"Your attitude in recent years has given a certain retrospective confirmation to my view of your Judaism."
"Judaism became abominable to you, Judaic scriptures unreadable; they ‘disgusted you’."
"The essential impediment, though, which has nothing to do with specific cases, is that mentally and spiritually I am obviously incapable of marrying."
"Marriage is assuredly the pledge of complete self-liberation and independence."