Franz Kafka Quotes

Each of us carries a room within ourselves, waiting to be furnished and peopled, and if you listen closely, you may need to silence everything in your own room, you can hear the sounds of that other room inside your head.

Did you hear that? I didn't hear anything. Put that question another way.

Hear the birds? Sometimes I like to pretend that I'm deaf and I try to imagine what it's like not to be able to hear them. It's not that bad.

To read Transtromer - the best times are at night, in silence, and alone - is to surrender to the far-fetched. It is to climb out of bed and listen to what the house is saying, and to how the wind outside responds. Each of his readers reads him as a personal secret.

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, it makes no sound.

For a split second, Harry thought how absurd it was for Tonks to expect the dummy to hear her talking that quietly through a sheet of glass, when there were buses rumbling along behind her and all the racket of street full of shoppers. Then he reminded himself that dummies could not hear anyway.

You wish to see; listen. Hearing is a step toward Vision.

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.

People aren't hearing all the music.

We do not realize the sound the world makes -- unless, of course, it comes to a stop. Then, when it starts, it sounds like an orchestra.

You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.

For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible.

I just want silence... Jesus, it doesn't mean I don't like you. It just means right now, I like silence more.

There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.

We scarcely know how much of our pleasure and interest in life comes to us through our eyes until we have to do without them; and part of that pleasure is that the eyes can choose where to look. But the ears can't choose where to listen.

I, who have never heard a sound, tell you there is no silence, and I, who have never seen a ray of light, tell you there is no darkness.

And then more quiet, silence so deep it almost drowned out the roar of the night music that pounded away in my secret self.

The ear is profound, whereas the eye is frivolous, too easily satisfied. The ear is active, imaginative, whereas the eye is passive. When you hear a noise at night, instantly you imagine its cause. The sound of a train whistle conjures up the whole station. The eye can perceive only what is presented to it.

His eyes made a slow scan of my closet doors, which were cracked. “I thought I heard something.” “Yeah, well, guess what? I’m a living, breathing person, and every now and then I make noise!

I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing…. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black.

The imagination is a place all by itself. A separate country. Now, you've heard of the French nation, the British nation. Well, this is the Imagi-nation. It's a wonderful place.

Anybody who can't hear the difference between a ball hitting wood and a ball hitting concrete must be blind.

When I am willing, all sound is available to me.

I tell ya, my wife, we get along good cause we have our own arrangement. I mean, one night a week I go out with the boys and one night a week, she goes out with the boys.

These days, more than any other time, we are worried about our personal life, our private life. When we talk about our private life, it means our home, our body even. It seems that when we want to have calmness in this world, we make a wall around us. This gives us a very calm environment, and when we feel that somebody is intruding into that, it makes us very angry and we feel we have to do something about it.