“Being the rational animal, man must be capable of thinking if he really wants to. Still, it may be that man wants to think, but cannot.”

Language is the house of Being.

To dwell is to garden.

The question of existence never gets straightened out except through existing itself.

Everything has always already been said. And yet this “same” possesses, as its inner truth, the inexhaustable wealth of what is on every day as if that day were its first.

Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing.

The possible ranks higher than the actual.

All the poems of the poet who has entered into his poethood are poems of homecoming.

Nothing is everything that doesn’t happen at this very moment.

To say philosophy originates in wonder means philosophy is wondrous in its essence and becomes more wondrous the more it becomes what it really is.

Language speaks and not the human.

Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens.

To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world’s night utters the holy.

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.

Questioning is the piety of thought.

Everyone is the other and no one is himself.

Beauty is one way in which truth essentially occurs as unconcealment.

To those people who say, ‘My father is alive because of animal experimentation,’ I say, ‘Yeah, well, good for you. This dog died so your father could live.’ Sorry, but I am just not behind that kind of trade-off.

Is it not first through the voice that one becomes animal?

The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.

I don’t know where I learned elephants like their tongues slapped. Whatever turns you on.

Men are pigs. Too bad we own everything.

The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse – as a luxury befitting a young man.

I think fur looks better on an animal than on a human being. So I dress my dog in a mink teddy.

The best part is coming. What’s the best part? You swallowing an entire cow whole? No. That’s the finale.