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

It's dangerous to watch staggering butterflies. They have a plan but it has no meaning.

In general, I agree with Jacob Grimm and feel that we ought to permit changes and uncontrolled growth in language. Even though that also allows potentially threatening new words to develop, language needs the chance to constantly renew itself.

Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings.

What makes books - and with them writers - so dangerous that church and state, politburos and the mass media feel the need to oppose them?

I had an uncle who was a postal official at the Polish post office in Gdansk. He was one of the defenders of the Polish postal service and, after it capitulated, was shot by the Germans under the provisions of martial law. Suddenly he was no longer a member of the family, and we were no longer allowed to play with his children.

Whenever there has been talk of exterminating rats, others, who were not rats, have been exterminated.