The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than of convictions, and of such facts as have scarcely ever become the basis of convictions. Under these circumstances true literary activity cannot aspire to take place within a literary framework—this is, rather, the habitual expression of its sterility. Significant literary work can only come into being in a strict alternation between action and writing; it must nurture the inconspicuous forms that better fit its influence in active communities than does the pretentious, universal gesture of the book—in leaflets, brochures, articles, and placards. Only this prompt language shows itself actively equal to the moment. Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines; ones 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.

From One-Way Street by Walter Benjamin, trans. Edmund Jephcott in Reflections: Essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings, ed. Peter Demetz, New York: Schocken Books, 1986