Walter Benjamin collected quotes in little black notebooks that he carried everywhere. “On occasion he read from them aloud, showed them around like items from a choice and precious collection.” (Hannah Arendt) According to Susan Sontag (On Photography), Walter Benjamin’s ideal project was “a work of literary criticism that was to consist entirely of quotation, and would thereby be devoid of anything that might betray empathy.”

Susan Sontag ends On Photography with an homage to Walter Benjamin, a quotes-only piece of her own, saying “though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism […] the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage.”