Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.

She knew that there were all kinds of ways to make a conquest and that one of the surest roads to a woman's genitals was through her sadness.

People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone.

A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.

If hatred strikes you, if you get accused, thrown to the lions, you can expect one of two reactions from people who know you: some of them will join in the kill, the others will discreetly pretend to know nothing, hear nothing, so you can go right on seeing them and talking to them. That second category, discreet and tactful, those are your friends. 'Friends' in the modern sense of the term. Listen, Jean-Marc, I've known that forever.

Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence.

Beauty has long since disappeared. It has slipped beneath the surface of the noise, the noise of words, sunk deep as Atlantis. The only thing left of it is the word, whose meaning loses clarity from year to year.