Quotes from Roland Barthes

Cosa rara, su voz que conocía tan bien, de la que se dice que es el grano mismo del recuerdo (" la querida inflexión..."), no la oigo. Como una sordera localizada...

If only we could put our minds in plaster casts like our legs! But I cannot keep from thinking from speaking; no director is there to interrupt the interior movie I keep making of myself, someone to shout *Cut!* Volubility is a specifically human misery; I am language mad; no one listens to me, no one looks at me, but...I go on talking

printed fashion functions, semiologically speaking, like a true mythology of clothing: it is even because the vestimentary signified is here objectified, thickened, that fashion is mythic. So it is this mythology of clothing (one could also say its utopia) that needs to be the first stage of a vestimentary linguistics.

4 de noviembre Esta noche, por primera vez, he soñado con ella; estaba acostada pero nada enferma, con su camisón rosa comprado en un supermercado...

I take a role: *I am the one who is going to cry; and I play this role for myself *and it makes me cry* I am my own theater.

The love story... is the tribute the lover must pay to the world in order to be reconciled with it.

Who knows? Maybe something valuable in these notes?

The heart is the organ of desire (the heart swells, weakens, etc., like the sexual organs), as it is held, enchanted, within the domain of the Image-repertoire. What will the world, what will the other do with my desire? That is the anxiety in which are gathered all the heart's movements, all the heart's 'problems.

Mass culture is a machine for showing desire; here is what must interest you, it says, as if it guessed that men are incapable of finding what to desire themselves.

I am waiting for an arrival, a return, a promised sign... Everything is solemn: I have no sense of proportions.

The difficulty of the amorous project is in this: Just show me who to love then get out of my way! Countless episodes in which I fall in love with someone loved by my best friend: every rival has first been a master, a guide, a barker, a mediator.

Literature is like phosphorus: it shines with its maximum brilliance at the moment when it attempts to die. — Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero . (Hill and Wang; Reissue edition April 1, 1977) Originally published 1953

La notoriété est la première forme de la naturalisation.

è sterile ricondurre l'opera a qualcosa di puramente esplicito, perché allora non c'è, immediatamente, più nulla da dirne e perché la funzione dell'opera non può consistere nel chiudere le labbra di coloro che la leggono

What relation can I have with a system of power if I am neither its slave nor its accomplice nor its witness?

No habría familias si no hubiera algunas exitosas!)

12 de noviembre Hoy—día de mi cumpleaños—estoy enfermo y no puedo—no puedo ya decírselo a ella.

Operation Margarine

27 de octubre Todo el mundo conjetura —así lo siento— el grado de intensidad de un duelo. Pero imposible (signos irrisorios, contradictorios) medir hasta qué punto alguien ha sido alcanzado.

What I want is a little cosmos (with its own time its own logic) inhabited only by the two of us

21 de noviembre noche "En todas partes me aburro

Lo que hoy es tabú es la sentimentalidad, no la sexualidad. El sujeto enamorado se siente muy solo hoy frente a lo que "la sociedad" hizo del amor.

The will to possess must cease--but also the *non* will to possess must not be seen.

De peur d'avoir à naturaliser la morale, on moralise la Nature, on feint de confondre l'ordre politique et l'ordre naturel, et l'on conclut en décrétant immoral tout ce qui conteste les lois structurelles de la société que l'on est chargé de défendre.