Literature is without proofs. By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that it is worth the trouble of saying it.

Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.

...language is never innocent.

Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.

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

The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

Man does not exist prior to language, either as a species or as an individual.

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.

The skyscraper establishes the block, the block creates the street, the street offers itself to man.

We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.

The photographic image... is a message without a code.

Without written goals, we fail to plan and to run with single-minded purpose.

Wishes don’t change the world. Only actions will do that job.

All my books reflect travel adventures of some kind, and all have a soul: a spiritual or mystical underpinning.

I can see Obama trying to be the president who suggests solutions for everyone who has experienced economic hardship.

The idea of Herman Melville in a writing class is always distressing to me.

I'd describe myself as a Christian who doesn't believe in God.

Bleep if I was going to stage a rescue in a freaking pantsuit.

Many outsiders see the art world as elitist and it is, except it is also oddly down-to-earth and embracing of oddballs who don't fit in well anywhere else.

Religion, society and state - from none of these do women get their proper honor. It is religion, which has created an unparalleled disparity between men and women.

My doctor says, 'You've got one of the hardest ones to treat because it's not bipolar, it's not up and down, you're always just about a quart low in the mood department.