The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.
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 ManThe 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.
Paul de Man