Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is black charcoal crushing white paper.

Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.

I was assigned to the Waffen-SS but was never involved in any crime. Besides, I always felt the need to write about my experiences in a larger context one day. This has only developed recently, now that I have overcome my inner aversion to writing an autobiography in the first place, specifically one having to do with my younger years.

Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings. It's not God in his heaven who sees everything. A kitchen chair, a clothes hanger, a half-filled ashtray, or the wooden replica of a woman named Niobe can serve perfectly well as an unforgetting witness to our every deed.

An empty bus hurtles through the starry night Perhaps the driver is singing and happy because he sings.

Art is hard for a puritan to understand.

If Jesus had been a hunchback, they could hardly have nailed him to the cross.