The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.

[Photography] has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, How beautiful!

I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.

For what is the program of the bourgeois parties? A bad poem on springtime, filled to bursting with metaphors.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.