The world is not dialectical -- it is sworn to extremes, not to equili — Jean Baudrillard

"The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is already reproduced, the hyper-real."

"Yet there is a certain solitude like no other - that of the man preparing his meal in public on a wall, or on the hood of his car, or along a fence, alone. You see that all the time here. It is the saddest sight in the world. Sadder than destitution, sadder than the beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honour of sharing or disputing each other’s food. He who eats alone is dead (but not he who drinks alone. Why is this?)."

"A series of accidents creates a positively lighthearted state."

"What you have to do is enter the fiction of America, enter America as fiction. It is, indeed, on this fictive basis that it dominates the world."

"Dying is nothing. You have to know how to disappear. Dying comes down to a biological chance and that is of no consequence. Disappearing is of a far higher order of necessity. You must not leave it to biology to decide when you will disappear. To disappear is to pass into an enigmatic state which is neither life nor death. Some animals know how to do this, as do savages, who withdraw while still alive, from the sight of their own people."

"There are cultures that can only picture their origins and not their ends. Some are obsessed by both. Two other positions are possible: only picturing ones end - our own culture; picturing neither beginning nor end - the coming culture."