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.

Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday.

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.

Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas.

Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.

Kitsch offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, wihtout sublimation.

The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.