The hardest hit, as everywhere, are those who have no choice.

Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation.

Work while you work, play while you play - this is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline.

The idea that after this war life will continue 'normally' or even that culture might be 'rebuilt' - as if the rebuilding of culture were not already its negation - is idiotic.

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order.

The hardest hit, as everywhere, are those who have no choice.

In many people it is already an impertinence to say 'I'.