"Finally, I would be inclined to produce the metaphor that the signifier is like style: they are already alike. It is style that one would already have there."
Jacques Lacan, On Psychoanalytic Discourse. Discourse of Jacques Lacan at the University of Milan on May 12, 1972, published in the bilingual work: Lacan in Italia, 1953-1978. En Italie Lacan, Milan, La Salmandra, 1978, pp. 32- 55. Translated by Jack W. Stone. French: "Enfin, je serai porté à vous faire la métaphore que le signifiant, c"est comme le style: c"est déjà pareil, c"est du style qu"on aurait déjà là."

"Also in my work my ideas are becoming - it seems to me - more stable. But then I do not quite know if you will like what I am doing now. For in spite of what you said in your last letter, that the search for style often harms other qualities, the fact is that I feel strongly inclined to seek style, if you like, but by that I mean a more virile, deliberate drawing. I can't help it if that makes me more like Bernard or Gauguin. But I am inclined to think that in the end you will come to like it."
Vincent Van Gogh, Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh; Saint-Rémy, c. 2 November 1889

"In the realm of the aesthetic, as you know, even imperfection and lack of completion have their value."
Robert Musil, Address at the Memorial Service for Rilke German: "Im Schönen haben, wie Sie wissen, auch Unvollendung und Unvollkommenheit ihre Würde." Robert Musil, Rede zur Rilke-Feier in Berlin am 16. Januar 1927

"I can see that you know no more about flowers than you do about styles; don't protest that you know about styles," he cried in a shrill scream of rage, "you can't even tell me what you are sitting on." [The young man had chosen a seat other than the precise one that has been offered him by M. de Charlus.]
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, The Guermantes Way French: "Je vois que vous ne vous y connaissez pas mieux en fleurs qu'en styles; ne protestez pas pour les styles, cria-t-il, d'un ton de rage suraigu, vous ne savez même pas sur quoi vous vous asseyez." Marcel Proust, Le côté de Guermantes (1921-22)

"All artworks - and art altogether - are enigmas; since antiquity this has been an irritation to the theory of art."
Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic theory. Newly translated, edited, and with a translator´s introduction by Robert Hullot-Kentor, London 1997 "Alle Kunstwerke, und Kunst insgesamt, sind Rätsel. Das hat von alters her die Theorie der Kunst irritiert." Th. W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, S. 182

"For a long time I felt without style or grace ? Wearing shoes with no socks in cold weather ? I knew my heart was in the right place ? I knew I´d be able to do these things."
David Byrne, Talking Heads, Houses in Motion, from the LP Remain in Light, WEA Records 1980