"The Metamorphosis" Quotes

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.

Life's true face is the face of the executioner.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?

The true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but only just above the ground. It seems intended more to cause stumbling than to be walked along.

I am in chains. Don't touch me.

I'll be all right, but will you hold me a little more tightly?

The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation.

There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.