Gilles Deleuze

"Language speaks us; we do not simply speak language, we are spoken through it."

"The future remains open because the present is not fully determined by the past."

"Beauty is not in proportion or harmony but in the rupture of established forms."

"To understand is not to reduce to underlying essences but to trace the conditions of emergence."

"Every organism is a symbiosis, a collection of forces in temporary alliance."

"The common is not given but produced through shared struggle and creation."

"To imagine is to actualize; imagination is not escape but the creation of reality."

"History is not a narrative of progress but a series of intensive becomings and breakdowns."

"The personal is not intimate; intimacy lies in the impersonal convergence of forces."

"To be patient is not to wait passively but to remain engaged with the slow work of becoming."

"The event is not what happens but the sense that emerges from what happens."

"Art is not expression; it is the production of a new sensibility and perception."

"To persist is to affirm one's own forces against all forces that would diminish them."

"The question 'What is?' must be replaced by 'How does it work and what can it do?'"

"The only way to get beyond ideology is to assert one's taste against all ideology."

"A book is not a communication of information; it is more like the initiation of a process that only the reader can complete."

"Becoming is always in the middle; you can only think of it as a process of in-between."

"The most important thing in the world is to free yourself from fear."

"Language is not life; it gives life to itself."

"Writing is a question of becoming, always incomplete, always in the midst of being formed."

"You don't think the earth or the body have exhausted their constituent possibilities."

"The political is fundamental because it is about collective desires and collective actions."

"Every intense experience contains a kind of madness."

"Schizophrenia is a voyage through the body."

"To think is always to follow the witch's flight."

"The condition of a concept is that it must make a difference."

"There is no art without becoming."

"The world is not waiting for a solution; it is waiting for experimentation."

"One must have 'chubby cheeks' to succeed—you must contain your energy."

"Forgetting is a very creative act; it is how we move beyond what has already been thought."