From my afternoon at the library, gathering:

Our language system is linear, based on difference which sets up polarities. It provides a space within its discourse for the oppositional. People in positions of power can make use of the strategies that exist to discredit work that is contentious to the social order. The unfamiliar is often labelled by the mainstream as inaccessible, which both discredits it, and recuperates it as marginal. Or it is labelled as topical, which is an attempt to devalue it. -- (Patricia Seaman, p. 107)

A real power of words is that they make our ignorance more precise. Writing is negative aspiration: to work strenuously towards the moment when failure is confirmed. -- (Anne Michaels, p. 97)

It's acceptable to be in a state of never quite arriving. -- (Patricia Seaman, p. 109)

-- Open Letter 8.4, 1992