The reason for privacy is not so that people will not know you go to the bathroom. It's to allow certain things to go on that you don't want other people to know about, when all is said and done. But the things I don't want other people to know about are not my sex life.

I think of myself as a very lazy writer, though other people see it differently.

Linguistics is very much a science. It's a human science, one of the human sciences. And it's one of the more interesting human sciences.

Clouds out of control decoct anticipation. What use can any of us have for two moons? The miracle of order has run out and I am left in an unmiraculous city where anything may happen.

It’s a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator’s experience should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the artist’s.

It is easier to argue that something nobody believes in actually exists than it is to argue that something everybody believes in is unreal.

The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can force it to change.