"Behind every work of art lies an uncommitted crime"
— Theodor W. Adorno

"Politics is opposed to morality, as philosophy to naïveté."
— Emmanuel Levinas

"I don't necessarily agree with everything that I say."
— Marshall McLuhan

"The medium is the message."
— Marshall McLuhan

"Don't let the bastards grind you down."
— Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale)

"War is what happens when language fails."
— Margaret Atwood

"If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next -- if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions -- you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning.
You'd never dare to."
— Margaret Atwood (Der blinde Mörder / The Blind Assassin)

"I don’t want your candor. I want your soul in a silver thimble."
— Don DeLillo (Valparaiso)

"He said, "The word for moonlight is moonlight.""
— Don DeLillo (The Body Artist: A Novel)

"There are dead stars that still shine because their light is trapped in time. Where do I stand in this light, which does not strictly exist? (155)"
— Don DeLillo (Cosmopolis)

"He wanted paper and something to write with, some way to sustain a thought, to place it in the world."
— Don DeLillo

"He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history--the very things, he says, that are most natural to him."
— Don DeLillo

"Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck."
— Joss Whedon

"Oh, poor Watcher. Did your life pass before your eyes — 'Cuppa tea, cuppa tea... almost got shagged... cuppa tea'?"
— Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

"If you're going to make a science fiction movie, then have a hover craft chase, for God's sake."
— Joss Whedon

"I'll take crazy over stupid any day."
— Joss Whedon

"Recognizing power in another does not diminish your own."
— Joss Whedon

"Very occasionally, if you pay really close attention, life doesn't suck."
— Joss Whedon

"I cannot abide useless people"
— Joss Whedon, Firefly

"Humor keeps us alive. Humor and food. Don't forget food. You can go a week without laughing."
— Joss Whedon

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness."
— Karl Marx

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."
— Karl Marx

"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them."
— Karl Marx

"(What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.)"
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Mandarins)

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
It is up to you to give [life] a meaning."
— Jean-Paul Sartre

"If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company. "
— -Jean-Paul Sartre

"Words are loaded pistols."
— Jean-Paul Sartre

"Ha! to forget. How childish! I feel you in my bones. Your silence screams in my ears. You may nail your mouth shut, you may cut out your tongue, can you keep yourself from existing? Will you stop your thoughts."
— Jean-Paul Sartre (No Exit and Three Other Plays)

"I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day. Today it seemed to want to change. And then anything, anything could happen."
— Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea)

"That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget."
— Jean-Paul Sartre

"I said to myself, 'I want to die decently'."
— Jean-Paul Sartre (The Wall)

"My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life."
— Hermann Hesse

"Every life has death and every light has shadow. Be content to stand in the light and let the shadow fall where it will."
— Mary Stewart (The Hollow Hills)

"I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me."
— Roland Barthes (The Pleasure of the Text)

"Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire."
— Roland Barthes

"In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like winnicott's psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe."
— Roland Barthes