Quotes Du Jour

�Holidays are in no sense an alternative to the congestion and bustle of cities and work. Quite the contrary. People look to escape into an intensification of the conditions of ordinary life, into a deliberate aggravation of those conditions: further from nature, nearer to artifice, to abstraction, to total pollution, to well above average levels of stress, pressure, concentration and monotony � this is the ideal of popular entertainment. No one is interested in overcoming alienation; the point is to plunge into it to the point of ecstasy. That is what holidays are for.�
- Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929), French semiologist: �Cool Memories�, 1987; tr. 1990.

�I would define poetic effect as the capacity that text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.�
- Umberto Eco (b. 1932), Italian semiologist and novelist: �Reflections on the Name of the Rose�, 1983; tr 1984.

�Often in winter the end of the day is like the final metaphor in a poem celebrating death: there is no way out.�
- Agustin Gomez-Arcos (b. 1939), Spanish author: �A Bird Burned Alive�, 1988.