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.

Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.

A blind determination to save the prestige of personal existence, rather than, through an impartial disdain for its impotence and entanglement, at least to detach it from the background of universal delusion, is triumphing almost everywhere.

It is in a small village in the Pyrenees where no one knows me 7that my life will come to a close.... There is not enough time remaining for me to write all the letters I would like to write.

Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.

Marx says that revolutions are the locomotives of world history. But the situation may be quite different. Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake.

The distracted person, too, can form habits.