“The Leftist does not have time on his side. He’s always in a rush. He produces speed everywhere so as to force you into hysterics or into a daze. But it’s not the kind of speed that propels you far away so that you find yourself stunned at having covered so much ground, stunned by the change of perspective and of thinking. Instead, it’s the haste of the monkey scratching at the same spot till a sore develops. That kind of animal will go on in public monologue to no end, rambling about the difficulty of being together; he will change the world without touching himself and keep running after a certain month of May; he will continue to live his sexuality divorced from thought, and thoughtlessly if possible, in obscure situations where identity and groundwork are not risk and desire is not exposed.”

“Power is not something to be destroyed: that remains beyond our means. What we can do, however, is understand its mechanism and do everything possible to disrupt it. Whether we do this by overriding power instead of censuring it, by working towards the generalized confusion of powers, by driving the rules of the game over the edge, we must always remember that these activities will continue to be exercises of power, nocturnal perhaps, but not the desired emergence of weakness between all men.”

“Here, we rebuilt the Leftist theater. There, we rebuilt the carnival of stars to assemble the next barricades in evening gowns. Theory for the sake of theory collided with madness for the sake of madness,and they both tried to reconcile themselves in the imperialism of youth and beauty.”

“Leftism dries up whatever it touches.”

“There is no escaping economics. Everything reverts to spectacle and exploitation. In this gigantic spectacle, the bourgeoisie directs the spectacle of the proletariat, but it is the proletariat who produces the bourgeoisie and its particularisms.”

“Rather than being lovers in order to breathe, we are queer in order to escape asphyxia.”

“But there was also the shame of a man who suddenly discovers that all his lies were transparent, and everything he thought so safely hidden had always been in plain view. He had been living one of those dreams. The kind of dream in which you are walking down the street, meeting friends and neighbours, smiling and nodding, and when you arrive at home an pass a mirror you see for the first time that you are stark naked.”