I believe in the value of the book, which keeps something irreplaceable, and in the necessity of fighting to secure its respect.

There is nothing outside the text

Survival in the conventional sense of the term means to continue to live, but also to live after death.

Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome,or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die.

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.

Everything is arranged so that it be this way, this is what is called culture.

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