“The poetis the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signsthe poet plays on the multiplic...”

“But because me and myself, as you no doubt are well aware, we are going to die, my relationand yours tooto the event of this text, which otherwise never quite makes it, our relation is that of a st...”

“And still the text will remain, if it is really cryptic and parodying (and I tell you that it is so through and through. I might as well tell you since it wont be of any help to you. Even my admiss...”

“In general, I try and distinguish between what one calls the Future and lavenir [the to come]. The future is that which tomorrow, later, next century will be. There is a future which is predictab...”

“Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with e...”

“Therefore we will not listen to the source itself in order to learn what it is or what it means, but rather to the turns of speech, the allegories, figures, metaphors, as you will, into which the s...”

“They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressure; there was ...”

“Adam was but humanthis explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have...”

“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning;...”

“We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabular...”

“But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.”

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe wh...”

“A good traveler leaves no tracks. Good speech lacks fault-finding.”

“My father always said that too many words cheapened the value of a man's speech.”

“Words', he said, 'is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life. So you must simply try to be patient and stop squibbling. As I am telling you before, I know exactly what words I am wantin...”