No harm comes to man from outside alone: dumbness is the objective spirit.

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

Advice to intellectuals: let no-one represent you.

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

Indeed, happiness is nothing other than being encompassed, an after-image of the original shelter within the mother. But for this reason no one who is happy can know that he is so. To see happiness, he would have to pass out of it: to be as if already born. He who says he is happy lies, and in invoking happiness, sins against it. He alone keeps faith who says: I was happy.

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

It is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz.