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“What must a text be if it can, by itself in a way, turn itself in order to shine again, after an eclipse, with a different light, in a time that is no longer that of its productive source (and was it ever contemporaneous with it?), and then again repeat this resurgence after several deaths, counting, among several others, those of the author, and the simulacrum of a multiple extinction?”
― Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy

“In a time when, as Woodson puts it, 'book sales trump the quality of ideas...”
― Joseph A. Tainter

“The notion of literature as only one of several avenues to a single type
of propositional knowledge is, of course, hardly the winning ticket in lit-crit today. More typical are sentiments that see such a notion as not even admissible, if at all desirable. The world of these academic refuseniks is, however, a bleak and sterile place. Disarmed by their own epistemic fiat, scholars cannot assert anything since they deny the idea of objective rationality. If they arrive at an insight whose truth they wish to defend – for example that truth and rationality are passé – they can’t do so because truth and rationality are constructed to be constructed.”
― Peter Swirski, Of Literature and Knowledge: Explorations in Narrative Thought Experiments, Evolution, and Game Theory

“To demand the absolute and to be content with absolutely nothing else results in a skepticism.”
― Bernard Lonergan