And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

Nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of non-thought.

Why don't you ever use your strength on me?" she said. Because love means renouncing strength," said Franz softly.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.

High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we have with going forward, with considering the sequence of generations a relay race in which everyone surpasses his predecessor, only to be surpassed by his successor. Without this relay race called history there would be no European art and what characterizes it: a longing for originality, a longing for change. Robespierre, Napoleon, Beethoven, Stalin, Picasso, they're all runners in the relay race, they all belong to the same stadium.