The bases for historical knowledge are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts masquerade in the guise of wars or revolutions.

Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at least a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure.

Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.

What we call ideology is precisely the confusion of linguistic with natural reality, of reference with phenomenalism

Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.

Curiously 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.

If one reads too quickly or too slowly, one understands nothing.