A marvelous somnambulism

"Besides, these are the same questions: do you love me? are you lying to me? are you asleep? And the reply — yes, I love you, yes, I’m lying, yes, I’m asleep — is equally paradoxical. But it is not untruthful. It simply comes from another world which is not the truth of the first. ‘Yes, I’m asleep. Yes, I’m lying. Yes, I love you’ all these answers reflect a marvelous somnambulism and, all in all, a very clear grasp of the relations we establish with reality when we are sleepy, lying or in love."

"It is not true that, in order to live, one has to believe in one’s own existence. Indeed, our conscience is never the echo of our existence in real time but the ‘recorded’ echo, the screen for the dispersal of the subject and its identity (only in sleep, unconsciousness and death do we exist in real time, are we identical to ourselves)."

– Jean Baudrillard
from Cool Memories and The Perfect Crime, respectively