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“Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Reading in no way obliges us to understand.”
― Jacques Lacan, On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: Encore

“They understand not only evil, it seemed, but the extravagance of tricks with which evil presents itself as good.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“A day or two after my love pronouncement, now feral with vulnerability, I sent you the passage from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes in which Barthes describes how the subject who utters the phrase “I love you” is like “the Argonaut renewing his ship during its voyage without changing its name.” Just as the Argo’s parts may be replaced over time but the boat is still called the Argo, whenever the lover utters the phrase “I love you,” its meaning must be renewed by each use, as “the very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new.”
― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts