Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou still unravished bride of quietness, then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary.

Nothing in human life is inherently private.

Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.

For the liberal state to accommodate a diversity of beliefs while having few positive convictions is one of the more admirable achievements of civilization.

Language, identity and forms of life are the terms in which political demands are shaped and voiced.

I enjoy popularisation and I think I'm reasonably good at it. I also think it's a duty. It's just so pedagogically stupid to forget how difficult one found these ideas oneself to begin with.

You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.