The task of art today is to bring chaos into order. Artistic productivity is the capacity for being voluntarily involuntary.

The sublime is only a step removed from the ridiculous.

The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite.

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

The gods look in pleasure on penitent sinners.

Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.

The lie has long since lost its honest function of misrepresenting reality. Nobody believes anybody, everyone is in the know. Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion.