There would be no history as we know it, no religion, no metaphysics or aesthetics as we have lived them, without an initial act of trust, of confiding, more fundamental, more axiomatic by far than any social contract or covenant with the postulate of the divine. This instauration of trust, this entrance of man into the city of man, is that between word and world.

Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say? (ed. 2010)