Every decoding is another encoding.

to read is to surrender oneself to an endless displacement of curiosity and desire from one sentence to another, from one action to another, from one level of a text to another. The text unveils itself before us, but never allows itself to be possessed; and instead of trying to possess it we should take pleasure in its teasing

Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria.

It's the only thing that keeps me going these days, travelling. Changes of scene, changes of faces

Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are "prefabricated" in the sense that we don't coin new ones every time we speak.

I'm a bit of a deconstructionist myself. It's kind of exciting - the last intellectual thrill left. Like sawing through the branch you're sitting on.

Four times, under our educational rules, the human pack is shuffled and cut - at eleven-plus, sixteen-plus, eighteen-plus and twenty-plus - and happy is he who comes top of the deck on each occasion, but especially the last. This is called Finals, the very name of which implies that nothing of importance can happen after it.