What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.

Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.

Very evil people cannot really be imagined dying.

The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available.

Art is the social antithesis of society, not directly deducible from it.

The darkening of the world makes the irrationality of art rational: radically darkened art.

Laughing in the cultural industry is mockery of happiness.

In the end the soul is itself the longing of the soulless for salvation.

The only true thoughts are those which do not grasp their own meaning

On the way from mythology to logistics thought has lost the element of self-reflection and today machinery disables men even as it nurtures them.

A film which followed the code of the Hays Office to the strictest letter might succeed in being a great work of art, but not in a world in which a Hays Office exists.

If I’ve prayed, I never have to worry about being the first one to show up.

The timbre of his voice went into that low register that made my insides curl in on themselves--it was like my uterus was tapping out a happy dance on the rest of my organs.

Liberals like me love America. We just love America in a different way.

A lie is real; it aims at success. A liar is a realist.

It is maybe not the best choice to have a favorite anything.

Attitudes determine our actions, for good or bad.

When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the window. The only way out is through the sentences.

Our constituency aren't the type of people to be on the Internet.

Today is what the Lord has prepared you for.

I would not like it thought that I do not buy my own paperclips, sir. I enjoy owning my own paperclips. It means they are mine.