The wish to be absorbed into the substance of the Other implies an insuperable revulsion for one’s own substance.

- Rene Girard, 54, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure

an anecdote on masochism.

A man sets out to discover a treasure he believes is hidden under a stone; he turns over stone after stone but finds nothing. He grows tired of such a full undertaking but the treasure is too precious for him to give up. So he begins to look for a stone which is too heavy to lift. He places all his hopes in that stone and will waste all his remaining strength on it.

Rene Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, 176.

[The desire to become another] can never be satisfied, of course, because even in possessing the object, individuals can only be disappointed. Others are not divinities after all, and possessing them or the objects they desire can never truly transform the being of desiring individuals.

- Richard Golsan on internal mediation, Rene Girard and Myth: An Introduction , 13

jealous, we

The indifferent person seems to possess that radiant self-mastery which we all seek. He seems to live in a closed circuit enjoying his own being in a state of happiness which nothing can disturb. He is God.

- Rene Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure

on becoming

In fact, the two men come to resemble each other a great deal through the identity of their desires. As the rivalry itself effaces what differences remain, they are finally no more than each other's desires.
- Richard Golsan on internal mediation, Rene Girard and Myth: An Introduction