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"At the same time all the houses round about promptly took part in this silence, and so did the darkness above them, reaching as far as the stars. 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."
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Exlpore more Atmosphere quotes
"Dark nights are unpleasant," "Yes, for strangers to travel,""The clouds are heavy.""Yes, a storm is approaching."
"The air soft as that of Seville in April, and so fragrant that it was delicious to breathe it."
"A general flavour of mild decay but nothing local as one may say."
"The smog curled between the streetlamps and the spokes of the wrought iron framework. It seemed through your body and into your bones."
"What a strange thing it is to wake up to a milk-white overcast June morning! The sun is hidden by a thick cotton blanket of clouds, and the air is vapor-filled and hazy with a concentration of blooming scent.The world is somnolent and cool, in a temporary reprieve from the normal heat and radiance.But the sensation of illusion is strong. Because the sun can break through the clouds at any moment . . .What a soft thoughtful time.In this illusory gloom, like a night-blooming flower, let your imagination bloom in a riot of color."
"Sleepiness seemed to be creeping out of the ground and up their legs, and falling softly out of the air upon theirheads and eyes."
"The sky was like ebony and the only illumination was the harsh white light of the central streetlamp, which cast shadows so hard it seemed you might cut yourself on them."
"Wendy's house, unlike many in Cape Breton, had three floors, along with a basement and attic. Aside from Wendy's bedroom, there was a laundry room. The dirty water in the sink would rush from the washer hose, bubbling up, threatening to overflow, but it never did. Next-door was a motel with a neon sign that read in turquoise and pink, "We have the best rates in town!, but the 'E' in 'rates' kept flickering on and off day and night so that every few seconds it would switch to, "We have the best rats in town!"
"Under the glass porte-cochA re of a theatre Amory stood, watching the first great drops of rain splatter down and flatten to dark stains on the sidewalk. The air became grey and opalescent; a solitary light suddenly outlined a window over the way; then another light; then a hundred more danced and glimmered into vision. Under his feet a thick, iron-studded skylight turned yellow; in the street the lamps of the taxicabs sent out glistening sheens along the already black pavement. The unwelcome November rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence, the night."
"Fancy your having no sunshine in London yesterday! Here it was glorious, like full summer, and I sat up with the window wide open, listening to the discourse of two amorous thrushes."
Explore more quotes by Franz Kafka
"Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe."
"One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so."
"It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable."
"It is as if I were made of stone, as if I were my own tombstone, there is no loophole for doubt or for faith, for love or repugnance, for courage or anxiety, in particular or in general, only a vague hope lives on, but no better than the inscriptions on tombstones."
"I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe."
"But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?"
"Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so."
"One idiot is one idiot. Two idiots are two idiots. Ten thousand idiots are a political party."
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