Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs . . . and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannies the most ignominious instincts are deposited. Mundane life proclaims the total subjugation of eroticism to privacy.

How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!

Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.

It is only for those without hope that hope is given.

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

Language has unmistakably made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theater. It is the medium of past experience, just as the earth is the medium in which dead cities lie buried.

The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.