The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. The destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenates, because it clears away the traces of our own age; it cheers, because everything cleared away means to the destroyer a complete reduction, indeed a rooting out, of his own condition.

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.

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

The work of memory collapses time.

During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well

Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

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.