We cannot understand without wanting to understand, that is, without wanting to let something be said...Understanding does not occur when we try to intercept what someone wants to say to us by claiming we already know it.

Being that can be understood is language.

The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it - what is said.

Unlike seeing, where one can look away, one cannot 'hear away' but must listen ... hearing implies already belonging together in such a manner that one is claimed by what is being said.

The essence of the question is the opening up, and keeping open, of possibilities.

I basically only read books that are over 2,000 years old.

All cities we have visited are precincts in this metropolis of the mind.

Nothing exists except through language.

The more language is a living operation, the less we are aware of it. Thus it follows from the self-forgetfulness of language that its real being consists in what is said in it.

It is one of the primary motives of modern art that it wants to abolish the distance which the viewer, the consumer, the audience maintain vis-a-vis a work of art. There is no doubt that the leaders of the creative artists of the last 50 years concentrated their efforts mainly on eliminating that distance.

The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror.

The process of translating comprises in its essence the whole secret of human understanding of the world and of social communication.

From Gadamer I learned that to understand a given thinker requires one to presuppose that he is right.