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.

Talent is perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage.

Suffering has as much right to be expressed as a martyr has to cry out. So it may have been false to say that writing poetry after Auschwitz is impossible.

He who has laughter on his side has no need of proof.

But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain.

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

A pencil and rubber are of more use to thought than a battalion of assistants. To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it.