Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.

Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].

Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written.

Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed, an architectural one, where it is constructed, and finally a textile one, where it is woven.

... [L]ess than at any time does a simple reproduction of reality tell us anything about reality. A photograph of the Krupp works or GEC yields almost nothing about those institutions. Reality proper has slipped into the functional. The reification of human relationships, the factory, let's say, no longer reveals these relationships. Therefore something has to be constructed, something artificial, something set up.

The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation.

As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.