Paul de Man - Blindness and insight (1983)

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Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone revealing that a fire actually took place.

Paul de Man

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

Paul de Man

Prior to any generalization about literature, literary texts have to be read, and the possibility of reading can never be taken for granted. It is an act of understanding that can never be observed, nor in any way prescribed or verified.

Paul de Man

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.

Paul de Man

Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.

Paul de Man