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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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