He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging... This confers the tone and bearing of genuine reminiscences. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil.

The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action.

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

Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.

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