Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.

Existence is illusory and it is eternal.

I am just coming out of five years of night, and this orgy of violent lights gives me for the first time the impression of a new continent. An enormous, 50-foot high Camel billboard : a GI with his mouth wide open blows enormous puffs of real smoke. So much bad taste hardly seems imaginable.

I want to know if I can live with what I know, and only than.

No excuses ever, for anyone; that is my principle at the outset. I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance. With me there is no giving of absolution or blessing.

Purely historical thought is therefore nihilistic: it wholeheartedly accepts the evil of history and in this way is opposed to rebellion.

Absolute virtue is impossible and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine.