As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scene.

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.

Peace is only possible when one of the warring sides takes the first step, the hazardous initiative, the risk of opening up dialogue, and decides to make the gesture that will lead not only to an armistice but to peace.

These years of the Ecole Normale were an ordeal. Nothing was handed to me on the first try.

I do not believe in pure idioms. I think there is naturally a desire, for whoever speaks or writes, to sign in an idiomatic, irreplaceable manner.

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.

Each time this identity announces itself, someone or something cries: Look out for the trap, youre caught. Take off, get free, disengage yourself.