In the sentence “She’s no longer suffering,” to what, to whom does “she” refer? What does that present tense mean?

We know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

Isolation and competition are inhospitable to learning.

Incoherence seems to me preferable to a distorting order.

A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see.

...that ambiguous area of culture where something unfailingly political, though separate from the political choices of the day, infiltrates judgment and language.

It is my desire I desire, and the loved being is no more than its tool.

I pass lightly through the reactionary darkness.

What I hide by my language, my body utters.

I have a disease; I see language.

Above all, do not attempt to be exhaustive.

To see someone who does not see is the best way to be intensely aware of what he does not see.

The grim egoism (egotism) of mourning of suffering

Ci che reclamo vivere la piena contraddizione del mio tempo, che mai cos bene ha reso al sarcasmo la condizione della verit .

[T]he more technology develops the diffusion of information (and notably of images), the more it provides the means of masking the constructed meaning under the appearance of the given meaning.

Language is neither reactionary nor progressive; it is quite simply fascist; for fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech.

What affects me most powerfully: mourning in layers—a kind of sclerosis. [Which means: no depth. Layers of surface—or rather, each layer: a totality. Units]

The cultural work done in the past by gods and epic sagas is now done by laundry-detergent commercials and comic-strip character

Engulfment is a moment of hypnosis.

Literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.

[T]he most repugnant bastard there is: the bastard-octopus.

Now take all the delights of the earth, melt them into one single delight, and cast it entire into a single man - all this will be as nothing to the delight of which I speak.

The author enters into his own death, writing begins.

Like man himself, who is the only one not to know his own glance, the [Eiffel] Tower is the only blind point f the total optical system of which it is the center and Paris the circumference.

To instil into the Established Order the complacent portrayal of its drawbacks has nowadays become a paradoxical but incontrovertible means of exalting it.

The (i)studium(i) is ultimately always coded, the (i)punctum is not)...

Afternoon with Michel, sorting maman’s belongings. Began the day by looking at her photographs. A cruel mourning begins again (but had never ended). To begin again without resting. Sisyphus.

Around 6 p.m.: the apartment is warm, clean, well-lit, pleasant. I make it that way, energetically, devotedly (enjoying it bitterly): henceforth and forever I am my own mother.

Today there is no symbolic compensation for old age, no recognition of a specific value: wisdom, perceptiveness, experience, vision.

—You have never known a Woman’s body! —I have known the body of my mother, sick and then dying.

My claim is to live to the full contradiction of my time

The key to change... is to let go of fear,

If a relationship is founded on love it doesn't end.

Well, the first year I lost my voice I didn't mind so much because I was going to have a baby and I was distracted with him anyway, I didn't even think about it that much, well, OK, this is what's happening.

And I kind of said to myself if I get my voice back I'm not going to take back the old anxiety about it and just focus on the limitations. I'm really going to enjoy it.

Being in the studio is like painting, you know, you can really take your time, and try different things, and kind of go deep into it.

But there's nothing that gives me more thrill than when I'm writing and a couplet works. I find the right rhyme, or it's just perfect. There's nothing that exciting.

Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong.

For me, art is a more trustworthy expression of God than religion.

Once your kids get older and get out of the house, it's not like it stops. They're on the phone with me every day; I'm intimately involved in their problems.

Yeah, I was in the phase for the last ten years or so where every record I made I said OK, that's the last one, I don't want to record anymore, I don't want to do this any more, I don't want to have a public life.

I wanted to be the writer in the room setting depth charges of feeling out the world with my language.You know, I had a very romantic idea about that.But I grew into being a performer.

I wanted to be a songwriter.I didn't so much want to be a performer.I more grew into that just from being a songwriter.

I think any young person who is going into the same field as their parent whose parent has been very successful, it's complicated.And it was complicated for me.

You stand in front of a great painting and your heart just opens and your mind expands about what's possible. That, to me, is a connection to what God is.

I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up.

I gave up language for a while, and I started painting.And then I only listened to Miles Davis and other instrumental music to see how it felt to be without words.

I was a songwriter; that was the torch I carried. This is an honorable profession. This is what I do.

As John Adams said, all democracies will eventually self-destruct. We seem to be doing it very quickly.

I adhere to the religion of art and music and small children.