I think that the apparent coherence which the term "woman" assumes in contemporary ideology, apart from its "mass" or "shock" effect for activist purposes, essentially has the negative effect of effacing the differences among the diverse functions or structures which operate beneath this word. Indeed, the time has perhaps come to emphasize the multiplicity of female expressions and preoccupations so that from the intersection of these differences there might arise, more precisely, less commercially, and more truthfully, the real fundamental difference between the two sexes: a difference that feminism has had the enormous merit of rendering painful, that is, productive of surprises and of symbolic life in a civilization which, outside the stock exchange and wars, is bored to death.

Julia Kristeva, 'Women's Time' in Signs, Vol. 7, No. 1 (The University of Chicago Press, 1981) p.18

Sara Granér, 'Jul Utan Gränser' in GP, Nr 349, Årgång 152 (Göteborgs-Posten, 2010) p. 67

With their parallell lives, animals offer man a companionship which is different from any offered by human exchange. Different because it is a companionship offered to the loneliness of man as a species.

[...]

Animals came from over the horizon. They belonged there and here. Likewise they were mortal and immortal. An animal's blood flowed like human blood, but its species was undying and each lion was Lion, each ox was Ox. This - maybe the first existential dualism - was reflected in the treatment of animals. They were subjected and worshiped, bred and sacrificed.

Today the vestiges of this dualism remain among those who live intimately with, and depend upon, animals. A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements in that sentence are connected by an and and not by a but.

[...]

The marginalization of animals is today being followed by the marginalization and disposal of the only class who, throughout history, has remained familiar with animals and maintained the wisdom which accompanies that familiarity: the middle and small peasant. The basis of this wisdom is an acceptance of the dualism at the very origin of the relation between man and animal. The rejection of this dualism is probably an important factor in opening the way to modern totalitarianism.

[...]

The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At most, the animal's gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond. They scan mechanically. They have been immunized to encounter, because nothing can any more occupy a central place in their attention.

Therein lies the ultimate consequence of their marginalization. That look between animal and man, which may have played a crucial role in the development of human society, and with which, in any case, all men had always lived until less than a century ago, has been extinguished. Looking at each animal, the unaccompanied zoo visitor is alone. As for the crowds, they belong to a species which has at last been isolated.

This historic loss, to which zoos are a monument, is now irredeemable for the culture of capitalism.

John Berger, 'Why Look at Animals?' in Mark Dion (Phaidon Press Limited, 1997) pp. 100, 102, 107

For if all knowledge of the natural world is conditioned by institutions of knowledge with their own particular and parochial ways of producing truth, then the real - Nature - is not so much that which appears in representation, as that which remains always outside it. If the primary habitat of human beings is the order of symbols and communication (the library), then nature can never be captured in any single representational system we may produce. The real exists as an excess lying beyond the scope of representation, as a reserve which the production of truth draws upon, but cannot exhaust or contain.

Norman Bryson, 'Mark Dion and the Birds of Antwerp' in Mark Dion, (Phaidon Press Limited, 1997) pp. 96-97

I have forced myself to contradict myself [...] in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Duchamp - The Art of Making Art In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
(Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1999) p. 296

What would I do with money? I have enough for my needs... If I had more money I would have to spend time taking care of it and that is not the way I want to live.

Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Duchamp - The Art of Making Art In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
(Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1999) p. 157

The mediator between head and hands must be the heart

Fritz Lang / Thea von Harbou, Metropolis (1926)

"Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a perfect modern house done for you by Poiret, it is something else perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalization. You have to be like Rodin, Michael Angelo, and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside."

D.H. Lawrence, Women In Love, (Penguin Books, 1976) p. 402

Originally published in 1921

"At the very last, one is alone, beyond the influence of love. There is a real impersonal me, that is beyond love, beyond any emotional relationship. So it is with you. But we want to delude ourselves that love is the root. It isn't. It is only the branches. The root is beyond love, a naked kind of isolation, an isolated me, that does not meet and mingle, and never can"

D.H. Lawrence, Women In Love, (Penguin Books, 1976) pp. 161-162

Originally published in 1921

"When we have knowledge, don't we lose everything but our knowledge?" she asked pathetically. "If I know about the flower, don't I lose the flower and have only the knowledge? Aren't we exchanging the substance for the shadow, aren't we forfeiting life for this dead quality of knowledge? And what does it mean to me after all? What does all this knowing mean to me? It means nothing."
"You are merely making words," he said; "knowledge means everything to you. Even your animalism, you want it in your head. you don't want to be an animal, you want to observe your own animal functions, to get a mental thrill out of them. It is all purely secondary – and more decadent than the most hide-bound intellectualism. What is it but the worst and last form of intellectualism, this love of yours for passion and the animal instincts? Passion and the instincts – you want them hard enough, but through your head, in your consciousness. It all takes place in your head, under that skull of yours. Only you won't be conscious of what actually is: you want the lie that will match the rest of your furniture."

D.H. Lawrence, Women In Love, (Penguin Books, 1976) p. 45

Originally published in 1921

För övrigt avskyr jag samhället, ty det vilar ej på fritt fördrag, det är en vävnad av lögn - och jag flyr det med nöje!

August Strindberg, Röda Rummet (Norstedts Pocket, 2007) p. 17
Originally published in 1879

Nu kan jag analysera den mycket omatalade konstnärsdriften, eftersom jag själv varit ute för den. Den vilar ytterst på en bred bas av frihetsbegär, frihet från nyttigt arbete; därför har också en tysk filosof definierat det sköna = det onyttiga; ty om ett konstverk vill vara nyttigt, röjer en avsikt eller tendens är det fult; vidare vilar driften på högmod; människan vill i konsten leka Gud, icke som om hon skulle kunna göra något nytt (det kan hon inte!), utan göra om, förbättra, arrangera. Hon börjar icke med att beundra förebilderna d.v.s. naturen, utan hon börjar med kritik. Man ser allt så bristfälligt och vill göra det bättre. Detta högmod som driver och denna frihet från syndafallets förbannelse, arbetet, gör att artisten känner sig stå över andra människor, vilket han på visst sätt gör, men han får också behov att ständigt påminnas härom, ty eljes kommer han lätt underfund med sig själv - det vill säga han finner intigheten i sin verksamhet och det oberättigade i sin flykt från det nyttiga. Detta ständiga behov av erkännande av sitt onyttiga arbete gör honom fåfäng, orolig, och ofta djupt olycklig - blir han sig själv klar, upphör ofta hans produktionsförmåga och han går under, ty att återvända i oket när han en gång smakat friheten, det kan endast den religiöse.

August Strindberg, Röda Rummet (Norstedts Pocket, 2007) pp. 275-276
Originally published in 1879

Dans quelques années, quand je t'aurai oublié et que d'autres histoires comme celle-là, par la force encore de l'habitude, arriveront encore, je me souviendrai de toi comme de l'oubli de l'amour même. Je penserai à cette histoire comme à l'horreur de l'oubli ; je le sais déjà.

Marguerite Duras/Alain Resnais, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, 1959

Democracy is not a fixed political form of society, but rather [...] the deformation of society from itself through the act of material political manifestation. Democracy is a political process, the movement of democratization, which comes close to the idea of direct democracy [...]. On my view, democratization consists in the manifestation of dissensus, in demonstration as demos-stration, manifesting the presence of those who do not count. Democratization is politicization, it is the cultivation of what might be called politicities, zones of hegemonic struggle that work against the consensual idyll of the state. Such a disturbance of the state does not have to be teleologically linked to the construction of an archic nation-subject, but rather towards the cultivation of an anarchic multiplicity.

Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding; Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance (Verso, 2007) pp. 129-130

Love is what gives consistency to an ethical subject, which allows it to persevere with a process of truth.
Love binds itself to justice on the basis of hope. The hope is that justice will be done and the subjective maxim is [...] Beckett's 'Continuez!' That is, continue in your conviction and love your neighbour as yourself. That is, we might define hope as political love.

Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding; Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance (Verso, 2007) p. 44

Ethics cannot be based on any pre-given account of the subject, because the subject is not something that one is, but is rather something that one becomes. One can only speak of the subject in Badiou as a subject-in-becoming insofar as it shapes itself in relation to the demand apprehended in a situation.

Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding; Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance (Verso, 2007) p. 44

Philosophical activity, by which I mean the free movement of thought and critical reflection, is defined by militant resistance of nihilism. That is, philosophy is defined by the thinking through of the fact that the basis of meaning has become meaningless.

Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding; Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance (Verso, 2007) p. 2

My work is real, not illusionary or conceptual. It is about real stones, real time, real actions.

Richard Long, Richard Long Selected Statements and Interviews (Haunch of Venison, 2007) p. 16

Argumentet "Kanske jag drömmer" är meningslöst därför att jag i så fall också drömmer detta yttrande, ja, t.o.m. detta att dessa ord betyder något.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Om Visshet (Thales: 1992) p. 57
Originally published in 1969

For Hegel, the world in its historical dimension is the dialectical revelation of consciousness to itself. In his curious idiom, the end of history comes when Spirit achieves awareness of its identity as Spirit, not, that is to say, alienated from itself by ignorance of its proper nature, but united to itself through itself: by recognizing that it is in this one instance of the same substance as its object, since consciousness of consciousness is consciousness.

Arthur C. Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (Columbia University Press, 2005) p. 15

On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant wth its contrary. Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it. The newfangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want. The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character. At the same time that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force. This antagonism between modern industry and science on the one hand, modern misery and dissolution on the other hand; this antagonism between the productive powers, and the social relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming, and not to be controverted.

Karl Marx, Speech at Anniversary of the People's Paper (1856)

I don't think it's relativism. To say that one needs art, or politics, that incorporate ambiguity and contradiction is not to say that one then stops recognizing and condemning things as evil. However, it might stop one being so utterly convinced of the certainty of one's own solutions. There needs to be a strong understanding of fallibility and how the very act of certainty or authoritativeness can bring disasters.

William Kentridge, William Kentridge (Phaidon Press Limited: 1999) p. 34

In the instant she depresses the shutter everything is changed. This sudden opening of the gate in the mechanism allows the photographer to slip through the gap to the space in front of the lens, the space that is seen. In doing so she impresses her governing role onto the scene, coating the subjects with something indefinable form her own presence. Her presence is, after all, hidden in the photograph but dominant in the moment of photographing. The act of photography is a metaphysical relation that differs entirely from the resultant photograph in that the photograph obscures the nature of the actual event.
The man puts the child down and the other runs off. The leaves of the potted plant sway up and down on long, cantilevered stems. They all exit. This end is always about to happen; the illusion of suspended time is wholly misleading.

M. Anthony Penwill, It Has To Be This Way (Matt's Gallery: 2009) pp. 31-32

Instead of culminating in hoped-for emancipation, the advances of technology and "Reason" made it that much easier to exploit the South of planet earth, blindly replace human labour by machines, and set up more and more sophisticated subjugation techniques, all through a general rationalisation of the production process. So the modern emancipation plan has been substituted by countless forms of melancholy.

Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Les presses du réel: 2002) p. 12

What does it mean to say that something is a drawing – as opposed to a fundamentally different form, such as a photograph? First of all, arriving at the image is a process, not a frozen instant. Drawing for me is about fluidity. There may be a vague sense of what you're going to draw, but things occur during the process that may modify, consolidate or shed doubts on what you know. So drawing is a testing of ideas; a slow-motion version of thought. It does not arrive instantly like a photograph. The uncertain and imprecise way of constructing a drawing is sometimes a model of how to construct meaning. What ends in clarity does not begin that way.

William Kentridge, William Kentridge (Phaidon: 1999) p. 8

De gamla som redan är döda skall man inte ta på allvar, då gör man dem orätt. Vi odödliga tycker inte om att bli tagna på allvar, vi älskar skämtet. Allvaret, min gosse, är en sak som hör hemma i tiden; det uppstår, så mycket vill jag tala om för dig, när man överskattar tiden. [...] Men i evigheten, ser du, finns ingen tid; evigheten är blott ett ögonblick och varar just lagom länge för ett skämt.

Herman Hesse, Stäppvargen (Albert Bonniers Förlag: 2003) p. 77
Originally published in 1955

There is always hope, but that must be combined with irony, and more important, skepticism. The context of knowledge is changing constantly.

Anselm Kiefer, "Heaven Is An Idea" in Anselm Kiefer, Heaven and Earth (Prestel: 2005) p. 166

The breaking of the vessels continues into all the further stages of emanation and Creation; everything is in some way broken, everything has a flaw, everything is unfinished.

Gershom Scholem, On The Kabbalah And Is Symbolism (Schocken Books: 1996) pp. 112-113

Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. Later on they do claim remembrance when they show their scars.

Chris Marker, La Jetée (1962)

En av lärorna på Tlön går så långt att den förnekar tiden: den tänker sig att nuet är oändligt, att framtiden inte är verklig annat än som en förväntan i nuet, att det förflutna inte är verkligt annat än som ett minne i nuet. En annan lära menar att all tid redan förflutit och att vårt liv blott är en återspegling eller ett minne – utan tvivel förvrängt och stympat – av ett oåterkalleligt förlopp.

Jorge Luis Borges, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in Fiktioner (Albert Bonniers Förlag: 2008) p. 34
Originally published in 1941

Den som ville tvivla på allting skulle inte ens nå fram till tvivlet. Tvivlandets spel självt förutsätter redan vissheten.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Om Visshet (Thales: 1992) p. 25
Originally published in 1969

"I live alone," he said simply. "I live in the open. I hear the waves at night and see the black patterns of the pine boughs against the sky. With sound and silence and colour and solitude, of course I see visions. Anyone would."
"But you don't believe in them?" Doc asked hopefully.
"I don't find it a matter for belief or disbelief," the seer said. "You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it? Don't you see visions?"
"No," said Doc.
"From music, don't forms of wishes and forms of memory take shape?"
"That's different," said Doc.
"I don't see any difference," said the seer.

John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday (William Heinemann Ltd: 1954) pp. 65-66

What good is it? Who benefits? Thought is the evasion of feeling. You're only walling up the leaking loneliness.

John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday (William Heinemann Ltd: 1954) p. 23

Om man förstår saken rätt och väljer de timmar när djuren smälter maten eller sover i sina hålor bakom högar av organiska lämningar träffar man i städerna knappast på annat än mineral, det minst skrämmande av allt som existerar.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Äcklet (Aldus/Bonniers: 1969) p.188
Originally published in 1938

The real importance of reason lies in the power it has to make us understand its own limits.

Eduardo Chillida, "Notebook pages" in Chillida (Pittsburgh International Series: 1979) p. 21

Is this immobility that which precedes the awakening of the elements, or that of the body fallen into a mineral sleep?

Octavio Paz, "Chillida: From iron to light" in Chillida (Pittsburgh International Series: 1979) p. 11

Strangely, from your little island in space, you were gone forth into the dark, great realms of time, where all the souls that never die veer and swoop on their vast, strange errands. The little earthly island has dwindled, like a jumping-off place, into nothingness, for you have jumped off, you know not how, into the dark wide mystery of time, where the past is vastly alive, and the future is not separated off.

This is the danger of becoming an islander. When, in the city, you wear your white spats and dodge the traffic with the fear of death down your spine, then you are quite safe from the terrors of infinite time. The moment is your little islet in time, it is the spatial universe that careers around you.

But once isolated on a little island in the sea of space, and the moment begins to heave and expand in great circles, the solid earth is gone, and your slippery, naked dark soul finds herself out in the timeless world, where the chariots of the so-called dead dash down the old streets of centuries, and souls crowd on the footways that we, in the moment, call bygone years. The souls of all the dead are alive again, and pulsating actively around you. You are out in the other infinity.

D.H. Lawrence, "The Man Who Loved Islands" in Love Among the Haystacks and Other Stories
(Penguin Books: 1960) p. 99
Originally published in 1929

Men den stora konturlösa naturen har smugit sig in i deras stad, den har nästlat sig in överallt, i deras hem, på deras kontor, i dem själva. Den rör sig inte ur fläcken, den håller sig lugn och de är mitt upp i den, de andas in den och de ser den inte, de inbillar sig att den är utanför, tjugu mil utanför staden. Jag ser den, jag, denna natur, jag ser den... jag vet att dess underkastelse är lättja, jag vet att den inte har några lagar: vad de anser vara dess ståndaktighet... Den har ingenting annat än vanor och den kan byta vanor imorgon.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Äcklet (Aldus/Bonniers: 1969) p. 191
Originally published in 1938

If you set nature against architecture, I am always on the side of nature trying to eat architecture, as it does in Mexican ruins.

Gabriel Orozco, Gabriel Orozco (Thames & Hudson: 2006) p. 80

Appearances, at any given moment, are a construction emerging from the debris of everything that has previously appeared.

[...]

Any image - like the image read from the retina - records an appearance which will disappear. The faculty of sight developed as an active response to continually changing contingencies. The more it developed, the more complex the set of appearances it could construct from events. Recognition is an essential part of this construction. And recognition depends on the phenomenon of reappearance sometimes occurring in the ceaseless flux of disappearance. Thus, if appearances, at any given moment, are a construction emerging from the debris of all that has previously appeared, it is understandable that this very construction may give birth to the idea that everything will one day be recognizable, and the flux of disappearance cease. Such an idea is more than a personal dream; it has supplied the energy for a large part of human culture. For example: the story triumphs over oblivion; music offers a centre; the drawing challenges disappearance.

[...]

To draw is to look, examining the structure of appearances. A drawing of a tree shows, not a tree, but a tree-being-looked-at. Whereas the sight of a tree is registered almost instantaneously, the examination of the sight of a tree (a tree-being-looked-at) not only takes minutes or hours instead of a fraction of a second, it also involves, derives from, and refers back to, much previous experience of looking. Within the instant of the sight of a tree is established a life-experience. This is how the act of drawing refuses the process of disappearances and proposes the simultaneity of a multitude of moments.
From each glance a drawing assembles a little evidence, but it consists of many glances which can be seen together. On the one hand there is no sight in nature as unchanging as that of a drawing or painting. On the other hand, what is unchanging in a drawing consists of so many assembled moments that they constitute a totality rather than a fragment. The static image of a drawing or painting is the result of the opposition of two dynamic processes. Disappearances opposed by assemblage.

John Berger, "Drawn To That Moment" in Berger On Drawing (Occasional Press: 2005) pp. 67, 69-70, 71
Originally published in 1976

Jag bygger upp mina minnen med mitt nu. Jag är hänvisad till, överlämnad åt nuet. Det förflutna söker jag förgäves nå: jag kan inte slippa undan.

[...]

Någonting börjar för att sluta: äventyret kan man inte skarva i; dess mening ligger i att det dör. Mot denna död, som kanske blir min egen, dras jag utan återvändo. Varje ögonblick kommer endast som en föregångare till de följande. Med hela mitt hjärta håller jag fast vid varje ögonblick: jag vet att det är unikt; oersättligt - och likväl skulle jag inte göra en rörelse för att förhindra dess förintande. [...] Jag böjer mig fram över varje sekund, jag försöker torrösa den; ingenting går förbi som jag inte griper, som jag inte binder för alltid inom mig, ingenting, varken den flyktiga ömheten i dessa vackra ögon eller bullret från gatan, eller gryningens falska ljus: och likväl förflyter denna minut och jag håller den inte tillbaka, jag tycker om att den går förbi.

[...]

Mild dager; människorna är inne i husen, de har säkert också tänt ljuset. De läser, de tittar på himlen genom fönstret. För dem... är det någonting helt annat. De har åldrats på ett annat sätt. De lever mitt ibland arvegods och gåvor och varenda möbel de har är ett minne. Små pendyler, medaljer, porträtt, snäckor, brevpressar, skärmar, schalar. De har skåp fulla med buteljer, tyger, gamla klädesplagg, tidningar; de har samlat på sig allt. Det förflutna är lyxen att äga.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Äcklet (Aldus/Bonniers: 1969) pp. 44, 49-50, 81-82
Originally published in 1938

Inför solen hade visionären den eviga rätten att se Undret, så ofta och så länge att det kom honom att tveka och dröja i de vändningar som en beskäftig civilisation alltid med självförgudande tonfall och kommandovissla påbjöd. Därför tänkte visionärerna också försvara denna rätt och värva över andra på sin sida för att förhindra att civilisationen fullständigt bröt ned allt det som var outtalat, obevisbart och vagt i livet och drömmen – själva livsstämningen, känslan av tillvaro sådan den förekom över en äng, i en skog, då man såg en dimma över en hösthage eller ett moln ute på ett hav. Eller nattens sus i tuvorna medan stjärnorna äro liksom speglingar av gräsens lysmaskar. Eller ekarnas minutsus i vinden, som för alla, i mystik och tystnad invigda, kan tyckas samla i en minut ekarnas alla sjuhundra år och allt deras väldiga öde. Det föreställdas plastiska rymdlighet. Det tänktas och seddas rent rymliga kontinuitet, denna outslitliga gudomlighet av mystik som är var morgon ny. Den kan endast avtrubbas, förgiftas och dödas inne i sinnet själv, när detta helt blir slav under en verklighet som ger sig ut för att vara hel, men som i själva verket inte ens är halv, och som, om vi verkligen levande levde med vår betraktande och föreställande livssjäl, inte ens en gång skulle vara ens till sjundedelen dess djupaste, egentligaste och fullaste liv.

Harry Martinson, Verklighet Till Döds (Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2001) pp. 78-79
Originally published in 1940

To think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick (Laurel Press, 1987) p. 384
Originally published in 1851

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick (Laurel Press, 1987) pp. 297-298
Originally published in 1851

I am not a thing – a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral part of the universe.

Buckminster Fuller, I Seem To Be A Verb (Bantam Books, 1970)