For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.

The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

Thinking no longer means anymore than checking at each moment whether one can indeed think.

In the end indignation over kitsch is anger at tis shameless revelling in the joy of imitation.

Once the last trace of emotion has been eradicated, nothing remains of thought but absolute tautology.

In the innermost recesses of humanism, as its very soul, there rages a frantic prisoner who, as a Fascist, turns the world into a prison.

Kitsch parodies catharsis...It is in vain to try to draw the boundaries abstractly between aesthetic fiction and kitsch's emotional plunder. It is a poison admixed to all art; excising it is today one of art's despairing efforts.