Short Story Writers From Austria

"Ein Gedanke kann nicht erwachen, ohne andere zu wecken."

"Es gibt eine Menge kleiner Rücksichtslosigkeiten und Unarten, die an und für sich nichts bedeuten, aber furchtbar sind als Kennzeichen der Beschaffenheit der Seele."

"Gemeinverständlich, das heißt: auch den Gemeinen verständlich, und heißt überdies nicht selten: den Nicht Gemeinen ungenießbar."

"Wenn Du durchaus nur die Wahl hast, zwischen einer Unwahrheit und einer Grobheit, dann wähle die Grobheit. Wenn jedoch die Wahl getroffen werden muß zwischen einer Unwahrheit und einer Grausamkeit, dann wähle die Unwahrheit."

"Verwöhnte Kinder sind die unglücklichsten; sie lernen schon in jungen Jahren die Leiden der Tyrannen kennen."

"Der Verstand und das Herz stehen auf sehr gutem Fuße. Eines vertritt oft die Stelle des andern so vollkommen, dass es schwer ist zu entscheiden, welches von beiden tätig war."

"Der Umgang mit einem Egoisten ist darum so verderblich, weil die Notwehr uns allmählich zwingt, in seine Fehler zu verfallen."

"Der Maßstab, den wir an die Dinge legen, ist das Maß unseres eigenen Geistes."

"The world belongs to those who possess it, and is scorned by those to whom it should belong."

"Wer die materiellen Genüsse des Lebens seinen idealen Gütern vorzieht, gleicht dem Besitzer eines Palastes, der sich in den Gesindestuben einrichtet und die Prachtsäle leer stehen lässt."

"Dilettanten haben nicht einmal in einer sekundären Kunst etwas Bleibendes geleistet, sich aber verdient gemacht um die höchste aller Wissenschaften, die Philosophie. Den Beweis dafür liefern: Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues."

"Die größte Gleichmacherin ist die Höflichkeit, durch sie werden alle Standesunterschiede aufgehoben."

"Theorie und Praxis sind Eins wie Seele und Leib, und wie Seele und Leib liegen sie großenteils mit einander in Streit."

"Niemand ist so beflissen, immer neue Eindrücke zu sammeln, als derjenige, der die alten nicht zu verarbeiten versteht."

"Die Kleinen schaffen, der Große erschafft."

"Der Witzling ist der Bettler im Reich der Geister; er lebt von Almosen, die das Glück ihm zuwirft—von Einfällen."

"Das scheinbar am unnötigsten gebrachte, törichtste Opfer steht der absoluten Weisheit immer noch näher als die klügste Tat der sogenannten berechtigten Selbstsucht."

"Es ist schwer den, der uns bewundert, für einen Dummkopf zu halten."

"Dass soviel Ungezogenheit gut durch die Welt kommt, daran ist die Wohlerzogenheit schuld."

"Wenn wir nur das Unrecht hassen und nicht Diejenigen, die es thun, werden wir unsere Kampfgenossen und unsere Feinde lieben."

"Ein armer wohlthätiger Mensch kann sich manchmal reich fühlen, ein geiziger Krösus nie."

"Immer wird die Gleichgültigkeit und die Menschenverachtung dem Mitgefühl und der Menschenliebe gegenüber einen Schein von geistiger Ueberlegenheit annehmen können."

"Enthusiasm does not always speak for those who arouse it, but always for those who experience it."

"One of the main goals of self-education is to eradicate that vanity in us without which we would never have been educated."

"Happy slaves are the bitterest enemies of freedom"

"Consider well before you immerse yourself in solitude whether your own company will be good for you."

"Believe flatterers and you’re lost; believe your enemies—and you despair."

"None are so inconsiderate as those who demand nothing of life other than their own personal comfort."

"Do not consider yourself deprived because your dreams were not fulfilled; the truly deprived have never dreamed."

"Misanthropy is a suit of armor lined with thorns."

"Indifference of every kind is reprehensible, even indifference towards one’s self."

"Nothing makes us more cowardly and unconscionable than the desire to be loved by everyone."

"Public opinion is the whore among opinions."

"A defeat borne with pride is also a victory."

"The moral code which was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for our children."

"The work of Kafka … has been subjected to a mass ravishment by no less than three armies of interpreters. Those who read Kafka as a social allegory see case studies of the frustrations and insanity of modern bureaucracy and its ultimate issuance in the totalitarian state. Those who read Kafka as a psychoanalytic allegory see desperate revelations of Kafka’s fear of his father, his castration anxieties, his sense of his own impotence, his thralldom to his dreams. Those who read Kafka as a religious allegory explain that K. in The Castle is trying to gain access to heaven, that Joseph K. in The Trial is being judged by the inexorable and mysterious justice of God."

"Kafka is enormously important. Years ago I wrote a Jewish travel guide to Prague and other cities in the region. At the time, I was really into Kafka. It comes out a little in my work now, probably more subconsciously than it did then. Then I was reading all of his Letters to Felice, I was nuts, literally, when I was living in Prague. It’s a cliché, I know. But to this day, everything we say about Kafka’s a cliché, since his writings are seen, with 20/20 hindsight, as a horrifying prediction of what was to come, both with the Holocaust and Soviet tyranny, living in a police state. But in terms of influence, there’s the horror and the grotesquery, the allegory and hyperbole, the elevation of pulpy narrative, the Jewish obsessions, the generational tensions, but also the humor. I mean, Kafka’s stories were also meant to be funny, which is something that is not often appreciated today. Philip Roth called him a “sit-down comic”...Culturally, working in this period of enormous transformation for Jews and in Europe more broadly, I found Kafka a sort of guide to turning history and memory into a narrative, into art that becomes even more compelling than the tradition it replaces. And there are specific things, like authenticity. Kafka was obsessed with Galician Jewish refugees in Prague at the beginning of World War I. He considered them to be the embodiment of authenticity. And in his diaries, he writes about them. He talks about how if he could be anybody in the world, he’d just want to be this little Jewish boy he remembered seeing, seemingly free of worry. He idealized them as true Jews, essentially. And that definitely stuck with me, because I’ve done similar things. I’m not proud of that, but we’re always trying to deprogram ourselves from what we have learned as authenticity when we were young."

"The impersonality of the communist state is not easy to understand. The huge dangers with which its subjects are daily confronted seem to come from nowhere, while threatening everyone who accepts responsibility for his own existence and so dares to be a man. Franz Kafka described the workings of this machine in a prophetic book, the moral of which many of our statesmen, including Mr Powell, have yet to learn. When they have learnt it, they will also know why The Castle, along with every other work by Prague's greatest writer, is now banned in the country of his birth."

"Kafka's Jewishness was a kind of dream, whose authentic moment was located always in the nostalgic past. His survey of the insectile situation of young Jews in Inner Bohemia can hardly be improved upon: "With their posterior legs they were still glued to their father's Jewishness, and with their waving anterior legs they found no new ground." Alienation from oneself, the conflicted assimilation of migrants, losing one place without gaining another This feels like Kafka in the genuine clothes of an existential prophet, Kafka in his twenty-first-century aspect (if we are to assume, as with Shakespeare, that every new century will bring a Kafka close to our own concerns). For there is a sense in which Kafka's Jewish question ("What have I in common with Jews?") has become everybody's question, Jewish alienation the template for all our doubts. What is Muslimness? What is femaleness? What is Polishness? What is Englishness? These days we all find our anterior legs flailing before us. We're all insects, all Ungeziefer, now."

"Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder verstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. Das glaube ich."

"They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves."

"It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable."

"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. His landlady's cook, who always brought him his breakfast at eight o'clock, failed to appear on this occasion. That had never happened before."

"He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath."

"This question of yours, Sir, about my being a house painter — or rather, not a question, you simply made a statement — is typical of the whole character of this trial that is being foisted on me. You may object that it is not a trial at all; you are quite right, for it is only a trial if I recognize it as such. But for the moment I do recognize it, on grounds of compassion, as it were. One can't regard it except with compassion, if one is to regard it at all. I do not say that your procedure is contemptible, but I should like to present that epithet to you for your private consumption."

"The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other."

"What an obstacle had suddenly arisen to block K.'s career! And this was the moment when he was supposed to work for the bank? He looked down at his desk. This the time to interview clients and negotiate with them? While his case was unfolding itself, while up in the attics the Court officials were poring over the charge papers, was he to devote his attention to the affairs of the bank? It looked like a kind of torture sanctioned by the Court, arising from his case and concomitant with it."

"Even that has its reason; it is often better to be in chains than to be free."

"'...it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.In the Cathedral"

"Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the High Court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one of the men closed round his throat, just as the other drove the knife deep into his heart and turned it twice."