A kitsch novel describes the world not as it really is, but as it is hoped and feared to be.

Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.

No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness.

Although every man believes that his decisions and resolutions involve the most multifarious factors, in reality they are mere oscillation between flight and longing.

The world has always gone through periods of madness so as to advance a bit on the road to reason.

The goddess of beauty is the goddess Kitsch.

One who hates is a man holding a magnifying-glass, and when he hates someone, he knows precisely that person's surface, from the soles of his feet all the way up to each hair on the hated head

Are we, then, insane because we have not gone mad?

The essence of kitsch is the confusion of ethical and esthetic categories; kitsch wants to produce not the "good" but the "beautiful."

Kitsch tends to wallow in beauty - its shortcoming is not aesthetic, but ethical

What's important is promising something to the people, not actually keeping those promises. The people have always lived on hope alone.

A territory is only possessed for a moment in time.

Yeah, well, we're all afraid." I sighed. "The angry more than most, I think.

There is hope for the sinner to be made a saint.

Marrying a man is like buying something you've been admiring for a long time in a shop window. You may love it when you get it home, but it doesn't always go with everything else in the house.

You don't try and put rockets under prime ministers.

... Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria. (There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery.)

I never kept a diary, but I wrote detailed notes of my travels.

All ignorance is the lack of love.

No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit

In my dreams of Heaven, I always see the great Masters gathered in a huge hall in which they all reside. Only Mozart has his own suite.