To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.

Literature tells very little to those who understand it.

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

[Photography] has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, How beautiful!

Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance - nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city - as one loses oneself in a forest - that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.

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