"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"Thinking is more erotic than calculating."

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

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

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

"A screen bans reality."

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

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

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

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

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

"It is a sign of sovereignty to risk one's life, that is, to turn life into a game."

"Today, to live means merely to produce."

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

"Sovereignty, the freedom unto death, is threatening to a society that is organized around work and production."

"Poems are magic ceremonies of language."

"Sabbath rest does not follow creation; it brings creation to completion."

"Today, tattoos lack symbolic power. All they do is point toward the uniqueness of the bearer. The body is neither a ritual stage nor a surface of projection; rather, it is an advertising space."

"When we subordinate rest to work, we ignore the divine."

"The 'intense life' advertised by the neoliberal regime is in truth simply a life of intense consumption."

"Every religious practice is an exercise in attention. A temple is the highest degree of attention."

"Rituals are processes of embodiment and bodily performances. In them, the valid order and values of a community are physically experienced and solidified."

"Silent listening unites a people and creates community without communication."

"Ritual practices ensure that we treat not only other people but also things in beautiful ways, that there is an affinity between us and other people as well as things."

"We can define rituals as symbolic techniques of making oneself at home in the world. They transforming being at home to being in the world. They turn the world into a reliable place. They are to time what a home is to space. They render time habitable."

"Rituals are also symbolic practices... in the sense that they bring people together to create an alliance, a wholeness, a community.""

"Logos is powerless without the force of eros."

"Thinking is an expedition into quietness."

"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."

"Those who devote themselves to rituals must ignore themselves. Rituals produce a distance from the self, a self-transcendence."

"In contrast to festivals, events do not create community."

"The inner music of things sounds only when you close your eyes."

"Pornography completes the deritualization of love."

"Money, as a matter of principle, makes everything the same."

"The pornographic face says nothing. It has no expressivity or mystery."

"What is obscene about pornography is not an excess of sex, but the fact that it contains no sex at all."

"The erotic is never free of secrecy."

"The eros-driven soul produces beautiful things, and, above all, beautiful actions, which have a universal value."

"Eros conquers depression."

"Catastrophic fatality abruptly switches over into salvation."

"Whatever is merely positive is lifeless. Negativity is essential to vitality."

"Eros and depression are opposites."