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.

Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.

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

Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.

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

Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone revealing that a fire actually took place.

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