The best image to sum up the unconscious is Baltimore in the early morning.

Psychoanalysis is a terribly efficient instrument, and because it is more and more a prestigious instrument, we run the risk of using it with a purpose for which it was not made for, and in this way we may degrade it.

The real is what resists symbolization absolutely.

Meaning is produced not only by the relationship between the signifier and the signified but also, crucially, by the position of the signifiers in relation to other signifiers.

The I is always in the field of the Other.

Writings scatter to the winds blank checks in an insane charge. And were they not such flying leaves, there would be no purloined letters.

In other words, the man who is born into existence deals first with language; this is a given. He is even caught in it before his birth.