So the experience of death is turned into that of the exchange of functionaries, and anything in the natural relationship to death that is not wholly absorbed into the social one is turned over to hygiene. In being seen as no more than the exit of a living creature from the social combine, death has been domesticated: dying merely confirms the absolute irrelevance of the natural organism in face of the social absolute.

The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available.

Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies.

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

The recent past always presents itself as if destroyed by catastrophes.

The objective tendency of the Enlightenment, to wipe out the power of images over man, is not matched by any subjective progress on the part of enlightened thinking towards freedom from images.

It is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz.