Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have at the moment of commemoration.
Walter BenjaminWe do not always proclaim loudly the most important thing we have to say. Nor do we always privately share it with those closest to us, our intimate friends, those who have been most devotedly ready to receive our confession.
Walter BenjaminThe construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.
Walter BenjaminThe good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.
Walter BenjaminTo perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return.
Walter Benjamin