The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

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

Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

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.

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.

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