(I)f we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.

Perhaps; but I am a difficult person to live with. My difficulty consists in not wanting to live with other people.

All over the world, as governments retreat from their traditional duty to foster the common good and reconceive of themselves as mere managers of national economies, universities have been coming under pressure to turn themselves into training schools equipping young people with the skills required by a modern economy.

My existence from day to day has become a matter of averting my eyes, of cringing. Death is the only truth left. Death is what I cannot bear to think. At every moment when I am thinking of something else, I am not thinking death, am not thinking the truth.

In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other.

You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.” “I’m going to end up in a hole in the ground... And so are you. So are we all.

Words are coin. Words alienate. Language is no medium for desire. Desire is rapture, not exchange.