'The relation of the narrator to Julien—and of all Stendhalian narrators to the young protagonists of his novels—is patently paternalistic, a mixture of censure and indulgence; the narrator sets a standard of worldly wisdom that the protagonist must repeatedly violate, yet confesses to a secret admiration for the violation, especially for l'imprévu, the unforeseeable, the moments when Julien breaks with the very notion of model and pattern. The narrator constantly judges Julien in relation to his chosen models, measuring his distance from them, noting his failures to understand them, his false attributions of success to them, and the fictionality of the constructions he builds from them. As Victor Brombert has so well pointed out, the Stendhalian narrator typically uses hypothetical grammatical forms, asserting that if only Julien had understood such and such, he would have done so and so, with results different from those to which he condemns himself.'

Barthes, the amateur mandarin

'... It does not seem implausible to suggest that Kantian and utilitarian moralities are moralities for hard times, moralities for a world in which neighbors have become strangers...'

'There are changes and no changes...'

'Moreover, everything is equivalent: writing Dostoevsky's The Demons or drinking a coffee.'

'It's not enough, bananas.'

'This is the era in which we live. Our diaries are public now.'

This guy's got three legal pads.

Raindrops sliding down an awning.