Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.

Nature, keeping only useless secrets, had placed within reach and in sight of human beings the things it was necessary for them to know.

One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge.

Resistances do not derive from a few heterogeneous principles; but neither are they a lure or a promise that is of necessity betrayed. They are the odd term in relations of power; they are inscribed in the latter as an irreducible opposite.

A way of life can be shared among individuals of different ages, status, and social activity. It can yield intense relations not resembling those that are institutionalized. It seems to me that a way of life can yield a culture and an ethics. To be "gay," I think, is not to identify with the psychological traits and the visible masks of the homosexual but to try and define and develop a way of life.

Death left its old tragic heaven and became the lyrical core of man: his invisible truth, his visible secret.

Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable.