No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.

Disgust at having to talk about oneself is what distinguishes novelistic talent from lyric talent.

The combination of a frivolous form and a serious subject immediately unmasks the truth about our dramas.

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos.

A constant interrogation.

Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray.

To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.