Suffering has as much right to be expressed as a martyr has to cry out. So it may have been false to say that writing poetry after Auschwitz is impossible.

In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew.

The objective tendency of the Enlightenment, to wipe out the power of images over man, is not matched by any subjective progress on the part of enlightened thinking towards freedom from images.

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

Those who cannot help ought also not advise: in an order where every mousehole has been plugged, mere advice exactly equals condemnation.

Even the loveliest dream bears like a blemish its difference from reality, the awareness that what it grants is mere illusion.

True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves.