Quality is decided by the depth at which the work incorporates the alternatives within itself, and so masters them.

They [the critics] deal with Schoenberg's early works and all their wealth by classifying them, with the music-historical cliché, as late romantic post-Wagnerian. One might just as well dispose of Beethoven as a late-classicist post-Haydnerian.

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 new human type cannot be properly understood without awareness of what he is continuously exposed to from the world of things about him, even in his most secret innervations.

The man for whom time stretches out painfully is one waiting in vain, disappointed at not finding tomorrow already continuing yesterday.

Death is imposed only on creatures, not their creations, and has therefore always appeared in art in a broken form: as allegory.

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.