Caleb

“And messieurs, mesdames, mesdemoiselles, you must not presume that it is enough for you to condescend to the criminal child, lavishing your attention, your concern, your indulgence upon him in the belief that he will respond with affection and gratitude: for that you will have to be the child and you will have to be the crime as well, hallowing it through a magnificent life, through daring to liberate yourself from worldly powers. Since we are divided—since some of us have shown such desire and daring—divided between the not-guilty (I won’t say innocent), between you, the not-guilty, and us, the guilty, remember that all your life you’ve lived on one side where you presume yourselves at no risk whatsoever, where you can even feel Good, extend a hand to shake. I’ve made my own decision, however: I’m on the side of crime. And I’ll help these children, not to return to your houses, your factories, your schools, your laws, and your sacraments, but to steal them all.”
― Jean Genet, The Criminal Child and Other Essays

“Ours is the ability, the need, to gainsay or ‘un-say’ the world, to image and speak it otherwise. In that capacity in its biological and social evolution, may lie some of the clues to the question of the origins of human speech and the multiplicity of tongues. It is not, perhaps, ‘a theory of information’ that will serve us best in trying to clarify the nature of language, but a ‘theory of misinformation’.”
― George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation

“Suffering is not discerned,
neither has love been learned,
and what removes us in death,
nothing unveils.
Only the song's high breath
hallows and hails.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“The whole is false.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life