Because of lies, we can produce and invent a possible world.

The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer,
the wheel. Once invented it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon
that is better than a spoon

The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, ''I love you madly,'' because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, ''As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.''

If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else

Translation is the art of failure.