Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.

A kitsch novel describes the world not as it really is, but as it is hoped and feared to be.

What's important is promising something to the people, not actually keeping those promises. The people have always lived on hope alone.

No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness.

Kitsch is certainly not "bad art," it forms its own closed system.

The man who is thus outside the confines of every value-combination, and has become the exclusive representative of an individual value, is metaphysically an outcast, for his autonomy presupposes the resolution and disintegration of all system into its individual elements; such a man is liberated from values and from style, and can be influenced only by the irrational.

The world has always gone through periods of madness so as to advance a bit on the road to reason.