"An absolute power would be one that never becomes apparent, never pointed to itself, one that rather blended completely into what goes without saying. Power shines in its own absence."

"Power is never naked. Rather, it is eloquent."

"Power turns pure being into a having."

"Architecture is a way for power to achieve eloquence through form."

"Power is more 'spacious' than violence. And violence becomes power if it 'gives itself more time.' Looked at from this perspective, power rests on an excess of space and time."

"Rather, power is most powerful, most stable, where it creates a feeling of freedom and where it does not need to resort to violence."

"Violence may capture space, but it does not create space."

"A truly powerful holder of power does not simply elicit agreement, but enthusiasm and excitement."

"Power is not opposed to freedom. It is precisely freedom that distinguishes power from violence or coercion."

"Often what is absent has more power than what is present."

"Violence and freedom are the two endpoints on the scale of power."

"The task of power is to transform the always possible 'no' into a 'yes.'"

"When power is separated from any communicative context, it becomes naked violence."

"Power tends to reduce openness... Power tries to solidify and stabilize its position by eradicating spaces open to play, or incalculable spaces."

"Depression is a narcissistic malady."

"Eros and depression are opposites."

"Following Foucault, we may define the art of life as a practice of suicide, of giving oneself to death, of depsychologizing oneself, of playing."

"Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails."

"Without narration, life is purely additive."

"Psychological disorders are symptoms of a blocked story... The patient is cured the moment she narrates herself free."

"If life can no longer be narrated, wisdom deteriorates, and its place is taken by problem-solving."

"Stories on digital platforms like Facebook or Instagram are not genuine stories. They have no narrative duration. Rather, they are just sequences of momentary impressions that do not tell us anything."

"The smartphone seems to be a playground, but it is a digital panopticon."

"The reason that people take selfies is not narcissism. Rather, it is inner emptiness. There is no meaning to stabilize the ego. Faced with its inner emptiness, the ego constantly produces itself."

"Zen Buddhism is inspired by a basic trust in the Here, a basic trust in the world."

"A screen bans reality."

"At the deepest level, the desire for complete union with God exhibits a narcissistic structure."

"The huge laugh is a most extreme expression of freedom."

"God is nothingness: He is 'beyond all speech.'"

"...I pray to God to make me free of God."

"Enlightenment is an awakening to the everyday."

"The emptiness of Zen Buddhism... creates a neighborly nearness between things."

"The freedom of the 'everyday mind' consists rather in not kneeling down in awe. Its mental attitude is better expressed as "sitting unmoveable like an object."

"The pornographic body lacks any symbolism. The ritualized body, by contrast, is a splendid stage, with secrets and deities written into it."

"Haikus allow the whole world to appear within things."

"It is not honourable to attack an enemy without putting yourself at risk."

"Thinking is more erotic than calculating."

"...Zen Buddhism, this religion of immanence."

"Emptiness empties the one seeing into what is seen."

"To die is to wander."

"Poems are magic ceremonies of language."

"Today, to live means merely to produce."

"The liturgy of emptiness dispels the capitalist economy of the commodity."

"Ritual society is a society of rules. It is based not on virtues but on a passion for rules."

"In the empire of signs, the soul, psychology, is erased. There is no soul to infect the holy seriousness of ritual play."

"When we resist impermanence, the self intensifies."

"Emptiness simply prevents what is individual from insisting on itself."

"Only a democracy of the world can now overcome this stasis. Ana-stasis is the power to come over stasis, and, in this sense, anastasis is health."

"All that is, all that can be, all that will be, and all that will never be are in a community."

"Politics is the fight for freedom and freedom is inseparable from the fight for it."