The trace I leave to me means at once my death, to come or already come, and the hope that it will survive me. It is not an ambition of immortality; it is fundamental. I leave here a bit of paper, I leave, I die; it is impossible to exit this structure; it is the unchanging form of my life. Every time I let something go, I live my death in writing.

But because me and myself, as you no doubt are well aware, we are going to die, my relation—and yours too—to the event of this text, which otherwise never quite makes it, our relation is that of a structurally posthumous necessity. Suppose, in that case, that I am not alone in my claim to know the idiomatic code (whose notion itself is already contradictory) of this event. What if somewhere, here or there, there are shares in this non-secret’s secret? Even so the scene would not be changed. The accomplices, as you are once again well aware, are also bound to die.

We are given over to absolute solitude. No one can speak with us and no one can speak for us; we must take it upon ourselves, each of us must take it upon himself.

I rightly pass for an atheist.

No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.

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

Who ever said that one was born just once?