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.

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.

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.

...At the end of the day, what matters is our faith in humanity...

Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?

Venetians feel affection and loyalty to their city, rather than to the Italian state.

Here's your protection for whatever comes: Find something to be happy about every day, and every hour if possible, moment-to-moment, even if only for a few minutes.

I grew up as a country boy.

I'm built like a 14-year-old boy. I have no waist, so anything I wear has to have a lot of trickeration going on. I don't fit into girl dresses. I can't just slip it on.

...Poetic injustice...having made over Japan in our own image. The Japanese, ...are now, next to us, the greatest consumers of meat in the world.

Helen Mirren is someone that I have really admired ever since I saw her in Excalibur. That was the first thing I said to her. "I loved you as Morgan Le Fay."

But nothing seems to do any good.

I love science fiction. I always have, ever since I was a kid. I love a lot of science fiction writers. William Gibson is one of my favorite writers.