One often speaks without seeing, without knowing, without meaning what one says.

I say things that contradict each other, that are in real tension with each other, that compose me, that make me live, and that will make me die.

Still today, I cannot cross the threshold of a teaching institution without physical symptoms, in my chest and my stomach, of discomfort or anxiety. And yet I have never left school.

If this work seems so threatening, this is because it isn't simply eccentric or strange, but competent, rigorously argued, and carrying conviction.

The traditional statement about language is that it is in itself living, and that writing is the dead part of language.

Certain readers resented me when they could no longer recognize their territory, their institution.

In Algeria, I had begun to get into literature and philosophy. I dreamed of writing-and already models were instructing the dream, a certain language governed it.