Sara > Sara's Quotes

“I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.”
― Michel Foucault

“I don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me.”
― Michel Foucault

“I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.”
― Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida

“Il n'y a pas de hors-texte.”
― Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology

“With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, "What the hell do you mean by that?" And he said, "He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, 'You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.' That’s the terrorism part." And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes.”
― John R. Searle

“Is there no way out of the mind?”
― Sylvia Plath

“I get rational when I panic.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.”
― Lorrie Moore, Like Life

“You are unhappy because you believe in such a thing as happy.”
― Lorrie Moore

“Usually she ordered a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, as well as a brownie, propping up her sadness with chocolate and caffeine so that it became an anxiety.”
― Lorrie Moore, Like Life

“Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.”
― Lorrie Moore, Self-Help

“Nothing's a joke with me. It just all comes out like one.”
― Lorrie Moore

“Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or even if there is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more than ten minutes a day; like sit-ups, they can make you thin”
― Lorrie Moore, Self-Help

“There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.”
― Lydia Davis

“I looked like a woman in glasses, but I had dreams of leading a very different kind of life, the life of a woman who would not wear glasses, the kind of woman I saw from a distance now and then in a bar.”
― Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis