25 Quotes by Julia Kristeva

The work of art that insures the rebirth of its author and its reader or viewer is one that succeeds in integrating the artificial language it puts forward (ne style, new composition, surprising imagination) and the unnamed agitations [Émois] of an omnipotent self that ordinary social and linguistic usage always leave somewhat orphaned or plunged into mourning. Hence such a fiction, if it isn't an antidepressant, is at least, a survival, a resurrection.

That faith be analyzable does not necessarily imply a method for getting by without it. . . .

The depressed person is a radical, sullen atheist.

[Single or lesbian motherhood] can be seen as [one] of the most violent forms taken by the rejection of the symbolic ... as well as one of the most fervent divinizations of maternal power - all of which cannot help but trouble an entire moral and legal order without, however, proposing an alternative to it

Can the beautiful be sad? Is beauty inseparable from the ephemeral and hence from mourning? Or else is the beautiful object the one that tirelessly returns following destructions and wars in order to bear witness that there is survival after death, that immortality is possible?

Geniul" este o invenţie terapeutică ce ne împiedică să murim de egalitate într-o lume fără viaţă de apoi.

The questioning of any and all entities, including belief and its objects, is one of Christianity's most impressive legacies; and humanism, its rebellious child, must not be prevented from developing this legacy [ «et l’humanisme, son enfant rebelle, ne saurait être empêché de développer ce legs. » ].

We found so much to say, to share, to learn.... For it wasn't just the Marquis de Sade profile and the sporty thighs-and-calves that seduced me. It was even more, perhaps, or certainly just as much, the speed at which you used to read, and still do.

Pregnancy = "the slow, difficult, and delightful apprenticeship in attentiveness, gentleness, forgetting oneself. The ability to succeed in this path without masochism and without annihilating one's affective, intellectual, and professional personality - such would seem to be the stakes to be won through guiltless maternity.