“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.”

“Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.”

“The notion that obedience dehumanizes those who render it is a popular cry of the philosophers of radical individualism, such as Thoreau, who are so important to America's myth of itself.”

“Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.”

“Man kills, the things he love the most, sometimes by the virtue of hatred, crime, anger and war and sometimes by dramatizing his activities. But he is not aware that his killings are his own self-image.”

“We are accused of being obsessed by property. The truth is the other way round. It is the society and culture in question which is so obsessed. Yet to an obsessive his obsession always seems to be of the nature of things and so is not recognized for what it is. The relation between property and art in European culture appears natural to that culture, and consequently if somebody demonstrates the extent of the property interest in a given cultural field, it is said to be a demonstration of his obsession. And this allows the Cultural Establishment to project for a little longer its false rationalized image of itself.”