Literature... is condemned (or privileged) to be forever the most rigorous and, consequently, the most reliable of terms in which man names and transforms himself.

Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.

Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone revealing that a fire actually took place.

If one reads too quickly or too slowly, one understands nothing.

Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.

The bases for historical knowledge are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts masquerade in the guise of wars or revolutions.

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at least a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure.

Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.

Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.

My mind has a time machine

I could still taste her kiss on my lips as I walked along a deserted Chalk Farm Road at sunrise.

If the gods do decide to wipe us out, is it such a bad thing? Maybe we've earned a little annihilation.

If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.

This is the sixth book I've written, which isn't bad for a guy who's only read two.

I have seen many lean riders in the peloton, but very few Tour winners

To make a beautiful piece means you have really witnessed it and really made decisions about it.

I don't work out as much as I should, but I do believe that it's a healthy mind as well as a healthy body that keeps me fit, sound and calm.

Remember that a healthy body is built or destroyed one decision at a time. It's up to you.

In the 27 years I've been doing this I never thought I'd find a better wrestler than me, but I found him. Daniel Bryan.