The blindness that opens the eye is not the one that darkens vision. Tears and not sight are the essence of the eye.

I rightly pass for an atheist.

But can one not conceive of a presence, and of a presence to itself of the subject before speech or signs, a presence to itself of the subject in a silent and intuitive consciousness? Such a question therefore presupposes that, prior to the sign, and outside it, excluding any trace and any différance, something like consciousness is possible.

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

There is no rigorous and effective deconstruction without the faithful memory of philosophies and literatures, without the respectful and competent reading of texts of the past, as well as singular works of our own time. Deconstruction is also a certain thinking about tradition and context. Mark Taylor evokes this with great clarity in the course of a remarkable introduction. He reconstitutes a set of premises without which no deconstruction could have seen the light of day.

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

Surviving - that is the other name of a mourning whose possibility is never to be awaited.