Literature Quotes

"The text contains its own critique within itself."

"Language is not merely a garment for thought; it is a mold for it."

"Language is a commitment to the world."

"Language both reveals and conceals reality."

"Language is the home of being."

"Speech is the only place where the subject can emerge."

"A letter always arrives at its destination."

"One writes to escape from insanity, not to create it."

"The letter is the essence of difference."

"The trace remains where meaning slips."

"Literature serves no purpose if it is not to change the writer as he writes it"

"A writer must refuse, therefore, to allow himself to be transformed into an institution"

"Words are things too"

"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself."

"A book is a little machine made of words for producing specific effects."

"To write is to become someone, but never to arrive at stability."

"To write about life is already to misrepresent its flowing character."

"Writing is the arch-trace of all other traces."

"To read is to accept the otherness of the text, not to master it."

"Writing breaks the presence of speech and introduces a temporal gap."

"The text is a palimpsest of meanings that can never be fully excavated."

"Reading is an act of violence and a form of fidelity."

"The text resists the reader's attempt to master it."

"Language is the most complex cultural object. It is the culmination of human activity."

"Silence is not the absence of speech but a dimension of language."

"Language reveals the speaker as much as it reveals the world."

"Language is born from the body and returns to the body."

"Meaning is not transmitted but negotiated between consciousnesses."

"A text speaks to us differently depending on when and where we encounter it; meaning is created through this meeting."

"The interpreter must maintain a productive tension between respecting the past and engaging the present."