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We are given over to absolute solitude. No one can speak with us and no one can speak for us we must take it upon ourselves, each of us must take it upon himself.

Jacques Derrida

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Jacques Derrida
Age: 74 †
Born: 1930
Born: July 15
Died: 2004
Died: October 9
Literary Critic
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Jackie Derrida
Jackie Elie Derrida
Jackie Élie Derrida
J. Derrida
Absolutes
Absolute
Solitude
Upon
Speak
Given
Take
Must

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Surviving - that is the other name of a mourning whose possibility is never to be awaited.
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Contrary to what phenomenology- which is always phenomenology of perception- has tried to make us believe, contrary to what our desire cannot fail to be tempted into believing, the thing itself always escapes.
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The trace I leave to me means at once my death, to come or already come, and the hope that it will survive me. It is not an ambition of immortality it is fundamental. I leave here a bit of paper, I leave, I die it is impossible to exit this structure it is the unchanging form of my life. Every time I let something go, I live my death in writing.
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I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.
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No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.
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Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets.
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Such a caring for death, an awakening that keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks death in the face, is another name for freedom.
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Certain readers resented me when they could no longer recognize their territory, their institution.
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If things were simple, word would have gotten around.
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Even if we're in a state of hopelessness, a sense of expectation is an integral part of our relationship to time. Hopelessness is possible only because we do hope that some good, loving someone could come. If that's what Heidegger meant, then I agree with him.
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The blindness that opens the eye is not the one that darkens vision. Tears and not sight are the essence of the eye.
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Every discourse, even a poetic or oracular sentence, carries with it a system of rules for producing analogous things and thus an outline of methodology.
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Actually, when I write, there is a feeling of necessity, of something that is stronger than myself that demands that I must write as I write.
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I am one of those marranes who no longer say they are Jews even in the secret of their own hearts.
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I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.
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I rightly pass for an atheist.
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There is nothing outside of the text. [Fr., Il n'y a pas de hors-texte.]
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I do everything I think possible or acceptable to escape from this trap.
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We are all mediators, translators.
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The boarding-school experience in Paris was very hard, I didn't put up with it very well. I was sick all the time, or in any case frail, on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
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