“To others, the universe seems decent because decent people have welded eyes. That is why they fear lewdness. They are never frightened by the crowing of a rooster or when strolling under a starry h...”

“The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life, that life's intimacy does not reveal it's dazzling consumption until the moment it gives out.”

“I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.”

“Above all human existence requires stability, the permanence of things. The result is an ambivalence with respect to all great and violent expenditure of strength; such an expenditure, whether in n...”

“Though the immediate impression of rebellion may obscure the fact, the task of authentic literature is nevertheless only conceivable in terms of a desire for fundamental communication with the reader.”

“Intimacy cannot be expressed discursively. The swelling to the bursting point, the malice that breaks out with clenched teeth and weeps; the sinking feeling that doesn't know where it comes from or...”

“[W]hat makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in orde...”

“I wanted to kill them. No, not kill. "Kill" is too dull a word for that which I desired. I wanted to annihilate them. I wanted to tear them limb from limb. I wanted to crack their bones and bury my...”

“It's not that success is guaranteed that we go to war. It's because it is the only alternative we have left to avoid annihilation”

“We look before and after,And pine for what is not;Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought.”

“I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it's the only thing to make it stop hurting.”

“MARCUS ANDRONICUS: Now is a time to storm; why art thou still?TITUS ANDRONICUS: Ha, ha, ha!MARCUS ANDRONICUS: Why dost thou laugh? it fits not with this hour.TITUS ANDRONICUS: Why, I have not anoth...”

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is...”

“The method that is required is not one of correlation but of liberation. Even the term method must be reinterpreted and in fact wrenched out of its usual semantic field, for the emerging creativity...”

“The woman who is liberated must never cross the line in which we ask men to examine their actions; we are a country built on the ideas, ingenuity, canniness, and downright brutality of manto questi...”