Literature... is condemned (or privileged) to be forever the most rigorous and, consequently, the most reliable of terms in which man names and transforms himself.
Paul de ManThe bases for historical knowledge are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts masquerade in the guise of wars or revolutions.
Paul de ManCuriously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.
Paul de ManLiterature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.
Paul de Man