Paul De Man

Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.