“From incoherent barkings of desire, man can advance to distinct speech now that, labelling the object with a name, he is able to make an implicit connection between the material it is made of and the work required to get it from the old state to the new in which it is ready for use. Thenceforth language firmly anchors the object in the stream of time.”

“Human life, distinct from juridical existence, existing as it does on aglobe isolated in celestial space, from night to day and from one countryto another—human life cannot in any way be limited to the closedsystems assigned to it by reasonable conceptions. The immense travailof recklessness, discharge, and upheaval that constitutes life could beexpressed by stating that life starts with the deficit of these systems;at least what it allows in the way of order and reserve has meaningonly from the moment when the ordered and reserved forces liberateand lose themselves for ends that cannot be subordinated to any thingone can account for. It is only by such insubordination—even if it isimpoverished—that the human race ceases to be isolated in the unconditionalsplendor of material things.”

“My conduct with my friends is motivated: each being is, I believe, incapable on his own, of going to the end of being. If he tries, he is submerged within a "private being" which has meaning only for himself. Now there is no meaning for a lone individual: bing alone would of itself reject the "private being" if it saw it as such (if I wish my life to have meaning for me, it is necessary that it have meaning for others: no one would dare give to life a meaning which he alone would perceive, from which life in its entirety would escape, except within himself). At the extreme limit of the "possible", it is true, there is nonsense . . . but only of that which had a prior sense: this is fulguration, even "apotheosis" of nonsense. But I don't attain the extreme limit on my own and, in actual fact, I can't believe the extreme limit attained, for I never remain there. If I had to be the only one having attained it (assuming that I had . . .), it would be as thought it had not occurred. For if there subsisted a satisfaction, as small as I can imagine it to be, it would distance me as much from the extreme limit. I cannot for a moment cease to incite myself to attain the extreme limit, and cannot make a distinction between myself and those with whom I desire to communicate.~George Bataille, "Inner Experience" pg. 42”

“Above all human existence requires stability, the permanence of things. The result is an ambivalence with respect to all great and violent expenditure of strength; such an expenditure, whether in nature or in man, represents the strongest possible threat. The feelings of admiration and of ecstasy induced by them thus mean that we are concerned to admire them from afar. The sun corresponds to that prudent concern. It is all radiance gigantic loss of heat and light, flame, explosion; but remote from men, who can enjoy in safety and quiet the fruits of this cataclysm. To earth belongs the solidity which sustains houses of stone and the steps of men (at least on its surface, for buried within the depths of the earth is the incandescence of lava).”

“These studies are the result of my attempt to extract the essence of literature. Literature is either the essential or nothing. I believe that the Evil—an acute form of Evil—which it expresses, has a sovereign value for us. But this concept does not exclude morality: on the contrary, it demands a 'hypermorality.'Literature is communication. Communication requires loyalty. A rigorous morality results from complicity in the knowledge of Evil, which is the basis of intense communication.—Literature and Evil”

“A man who finds himself among others is irritated because he does not know why he is not one of the others.In bed next to a girl he loves, he forgets that he does not know why he is himself instead of the body he touches.Without knowing it, he suffers from the mental darkness that keeps him from screaming that he himself is the girl who forgets his presence while shuddering in his arms.”

“You perhaps now know that desire reduces us to pulp.”