Rather than ask, What is the attitude of a work to the relations of production of its time? I should like to ask, What is its position in them.

Not to find one’s way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one’s way in a city, as one loses one’s way in a forest, requires some schooling.

Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present.

He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

Literature tells very little to those who understand it.

Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.