“I love you is unsubtle. It removes explanations, facilities, degrees, scruples.”

Who speaks is not who writes, and who writes is not who is.

In an initial period, Photography, in order to surprise, photographs the notable; but soon, by a familiar reversal, it decrees notable whatever it photographs. The ‘anything whatever’ then becomes the sophisticated acme of value.

He who reads a story only once is condemned to read the same story his whole life.

Television doomed us to the Family, whose household instrument it has become-what the hearth used to be, flanked by the communal kettle.

Literature is the question minus the answer.

Touch is the most demystifying of all senses, different from sight which is the most magical.

Why is it better to last than to burn?

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

I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.

The lover’s fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.

The book creates meaning, the meaning creates life.

A paradox: the same century invented history and photography. But history is a memory fabricated according to positive formulas, a pure intellectual discourse which abolishes mythic time; and the photograph is a certain but fugitive testimony.

The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized!

I passed beyond the unreality of the thing represented, I entered crazily into the spectacle, into the image, taking into my arms what is dead, what is going to die.

To eat steak rare represents both a nature and a morality.

There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it.

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it’s far removed from your situation.

In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas – no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.

It is easy to remove the mind from harping on the lost illusion of immortality. The disciplined intellect fears nothing and craves no sugar-plum at the day’s end, but is content to accept life and serve society as best it may.

If an incompetent chieftain is removed, seldom do we appoint his highest-ranking subordinate to his place

It should be forbidden and severely punished to remove cancer by cutting, burning, cautery, and other fiendish tortures. It is from nature that the disease comes, and from nature comes the cure, not from physicians.

The viewers must come to understand the sacredness of painting, so they will remove their hats as if they were in church.

And it will fall out as in a complication of diseases, that by applying a remedy to one sore, you will provoke another; and that which removes the one ill symptom produces others.

Let us not doubt that God has a father’s pity towards us, and that in the removal of that which is dearest to us He is still loving and kind.