Yama

“This is merely one of the sides of the conspiracy.
The other side is that of the spectator who, for want of understanding anything whatever most of the time, consumes his own culture at one remove. He literally consumes the fact that he understands nothing and that there is no necessity in all this except the imperative of culture, of being a part of the integrated circuit of culture. But culture is itself merely an epiphenomenon of global circulation.
The idea of art has become rarefied and minimal, leading ultimately to conceptual art, where it ends in the non-exhibition of non-works in non-galleries - the apotheosis of art as non-event. As a corollary, the consumer circulates in all this in order to experience his non- enjoyment of the works.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact

“If you say: 'I am real, this is real, the world is real', no one laughs. If you say: 'This is a simulacrum, you are no more than a simulacrum, this war is a simulacrum', everyone bursts out laughing.”
― Jean Baudrillard

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Why do you weep? Did you think I was immortal?”
― Louis XIV