Quotes from Maurice Blanchot

I call disaster what does not have the last limit: that which drags the last in the disaster.

He would never know what he knew. That was loneliness.

Thought, infinitesimal thought, calm thought, pain. Later, he asked himself how he had entered the calm. He couldn't talk about it with himself. Only joy at feeling he was in harmony with the words: "Later, he ...

Attendre, se rendre attentif à ce qui fait de l'attente un acte neutre, enroulé sur soi, serré en cercles dont le plus intérieur et le plus extérieur coïncident, attention distraite en attente et jusqu'à l'inattendu. Attente, attente qui est le refus de rien attendre, calme étendue déroulée par les pas.

Deux paroles étroitement serrées l'une contre l'autre, comme deux corps vivants, mais aux limites indécises.

The feeling of the uselessness of what I am doing is linked to this other feeling that nothing is more serious.

Where he is, only being speaks—which means that language doesn't speak any more, but is.

The notion of characters, as the traditional form of the novel, is only one of the compromises by which the writer, drawn out of himself by literature in search of its essence, tries to salvage his relations with the world and himself.

Kafka remarks, with surprise, with enchantment, that he has entered into literature as soon as he can substitute "He" for "I." This is true, but the transformation is much more profound. The writer belongs to a language which no one speaks, which is addressed to no one, which has no center, and which reveals nothing.

BekleyiÅŸ, art?k bekleyecek hiçbir ÅŸey olmad???nda, bekleyiÅŸin sonu bile beklenmediÄŸinde baÅŸlar. BekleyiÅŸ ne beklediÄŸini bilmez ve onu y?kar. BekleyiÅŸ hiçbir ÅŸey beklemez.

The disaster ruins everything, all the while leaving everything intact

Lo que atrae al escritor, lo que hace vibrar al artista, no es directamen­te la obra, sino su búsqueda, el movimiento que conduce a ella, la aproximación de lo que hace posible a la obra: el arte, la literatura y lo que disimulan estas dos palabras. - El libro que vendrá. (p. 223)

On eût dit qu'en parlant un langage dont le caractère enfantin ne permettait pas qu'on le tînt pour un langage, elle donnait aux mots insignifiants l'aspect de mots incompréhensibles. Elle ne disait rien, mais ne rien dire était pour elle un mode d'expression trop significatif, au-dessous duquel elle réussissait à moins dire encore.

Whoever wants to remember himself must entrust himself to forgetfulness, to the risk that absolute forgetfulness is, and the beautiful chance that memory then becomes.

Moments mystérieux pendant lesquels, privée de tout courage et incapable de mouvement, elle semblait ne rien faire, alors qu'accomplissant un travail infini, elle ne cessait de descendre jeter par-dessus bord pensées de vivante, pensées de morte pour se creuser en elle un asile d'extrême silence.

Not you, not I: the forgetting will forget me in you, and the impersonal remembrance will efface me from that which remembers.

The tone is not the writer's voice, but the intimacy of the silence he imposes upon the word. This implies that the silence is still his—what remains of him in the discretion that sets him aside. The tone makes great writers, but perhaps the work is indifferent to what makes them great.

Quand tout est dit, ce qui reste à dire est le désastre, ruine de parole, défaillance par l'écriture, rumeur qui murmure : ce qui reste sans reste.

Then literature has the glorious solitude of reason, that rarefied life at the heart of the whole which would require resolution and courage if this reason were not in fact the stability of an ordered aristocratic society; that is, the noble satisfaction of a part of society which concentrates the whole within itself by isolating itself well above what sustains it.

Waiting is the awaiting of presence that is not given in waiting, presence that is led, however, to the simple play of presence by wait­ing that withdraws from presence everything that is present it.

One's thinking about me makes me feel this self; one's not thinking about me leaves me in this self that exceeds me."-"At least disappear in this thought.

Each time, Thomas was thrust back into the depths of his being by the very words which had haunted him and which he was pursuing as his nightmare and the explanation of his nightmare. He found that he was ever more empty, ever heavier; he no longer moved without infinite fatigue. His body, after so many struggles, became entirely opaque, and to those who looked at it, it gave the peaceful impression of sleep, though it had not ceased to be awake.

By her anguish; she made the sacrifice, full of strangeness, of her certainty that she existed, in order to give a sense to this nothingness of love which she had become. and thus, deep within her, already sealed, already dead, the most profound passion came to be.

He sensed that this thought was not actually common to them, but rather that they would be in common only in this thought.