“ Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets. Jacques Derrida
“ The circle of the return to birth can only remain open, but this is a chance, a sign of life, and a wound. Jacques Derrida
“ Let us narrow the arguments down further. In certain respects, the theme of supplementarity is certainly no more than one theme among others. It is in a chain, carried by it. Perhaps one could substit… Jacques Derrida
“ I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan. Jacques Derrida
“ Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with ever… Jacques Derrida
“ Contrary to what phenomenology—which is always phenomenology of perception—has tried to make us believe, contrary to what our desire cannot fail to be tempted into believing, the thing itself always e… Jacques Derrida
“ I remain ‘torn’ (between a ‘hyberbolic’ ethical vision of forgiveness, pure forgiveness, and the reality of a society at work in pragmatic processes of reconciliation). But without power, desire, or n… Jacques Derrida
“ These two poles, the unconditional and the conditional, are absolutely heterogeneous, and must remain irreducible to one another. They are nonetheless indissociable: if one wants, and it is necessary,… Jacques Derrida
“ Still less, despite appearances, will it have been a collection of three “essays” whose itinerary it would be time, after the fact, to recognize; whose continuity and underlying laws could now be poin… Jacques Derrida
“ For the same reason there is nowhere to begin to trace the sheaf or the graphics of differance. For what is put into question is precisely the quest for a rightful beginning, an absolute point of depa… Jacques Derrida
“ Let us being again. To take some examples: why should “literature” still designate that which already breaks away from literature—away from what has always been conceived and signified under that name… Jacques Derrida
“ It goes without saying that these effects do not suffice to annul the necessity for a “change of terrain.” It also goes without saying that the choice between these two forms of deconstruction cannot… Jacques Derrida
“ Therefore we will not listen to the source itself in order to learn what it is or what it means, but rather to the turns of speech, the allegories, figures, metaphors, as you will, into which the sour… Jacques Derrida
“ A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its laws and ru… Jacques Derrida
“ In general, I try and distinguish between what one calls the Future and “l’avenir” [the ‘to come]. The future is that which – tomorrow, later, next century – will be. There is a future which is predic… Jacques Derrida
“ And still the text will remain, if it is really cryptic and parodying (and I tell you that it is so through and through. I might as well tell you since it won’t be of any help to you. Even my admissio… Jacques Derrida
“ But because me and myself, as you no doubt are well aware, we are going to die, my relation—and yours too—to the event of this text, which otherwise never quite makes it, our relation is that of a str… Jacques Derrida
