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.

In other words, the unique value of the "authentic" work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.

Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.

Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.

History breaks down into images, not into stories.