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.

To say 'we' and mean 'I' is one of the most recondite insults.

The sublime is only a step removed from the ridiculous.

The law of the innermost form of the essay is heresy

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

The dialectic cannot stop short before the conceptsof health and sickness, nor indeed before their siblings reason and unreason.

There is no love that is not an echo.