Melancholy betrays the world for the sake of knowledge. But in its tenacious self-absorption it embraces dead objects in its contemplation, in order to redeem them

To the lover the loved one always appears as solitary.

To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.

Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.

Kitsch offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, wihtout sublimation.

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.

Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.