Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred. – Walter Benjamin
Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation. – Walter Benjamin
Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death. – Walter Benjamin
Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know. – Walter Benjamin