“Either you have not to be serious and seem it, or to be serious and not seem it. Those who combine being serious with seeming serious are insignificant” (p. 5)
“Is it perhaps the case that Rossif filmed animals so well only because he secretly detested them? Everyone hides some measure of cruelty towards their object. There is no point in imputing this cruelty to unconscious motivations or some trite psychology: it is a symbolic rule. Analysis is part of the theatre of cruelty. Destruction is part of the (loving) understanding of the object.” (pps. 9-10)
“I found her so beautiful in black only because I dreamt of her dead. In fact, it was because I dreamt of her as a widow. What I was in love with in her was the allegory of my own death. But I possessed that allegory physically — which is an original form of the work of mourning.” (p. 33)
“Just as haemophiliacs are unable to staunch the flow of blood, so, semiophiliacs that we are, we are unable to staunch the flow of meaning.” (p. 77)
“The ‘therapeutic window’. What a delicious term for the interruption of medical treatment! Might you perhaps hurl yourself into the void through this therapeutic window? How about a hermeneutic window from which to hurl yourself beyond meaning. Or an existential window from which to hurl yourself out of existence and the perpetual reasons for existing.” (p. 95)
“Looking in the mirror, everyone adopts a flattering pose. In front of the cash dispenser screen, everyone takes on an air of death. Such is the terrible reflection of money on a face — or rather the abstraction of money on the absence of face. The faces are those of hostages on television, which light up only when they are released.” (p. 99)
(Page numbers from the Verso 2007 edition)