Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance - nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city - as one loses oneself in a forest - that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.

No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.

Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.

He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.

What we must demand from the photographer is the ability to put such a caption beneath his picture as will rescue it from the ravages of modishness and confer upon it a revolutionary use value.

For only that which we knew and practiced at age 15 will one day constitute our attraction. And one thing, therefore, can never be made good: having neglected to run away from home.