Quotes from Roland Barthes

Where there is meaning, there is paradigm, and where there is paradigm (opposition), there is meaning . . . elliptically put: meaning rests on conflict (the choice of one term against another), and all conflict is generative of meaning: to choose one and refuse the other is always a sacrifice made to meaning, to produce meaning, to offer it to be consumed.

Literature is like phosphorus: it shines with its maximum brilliance and the moment when it attempts to die.

Text of bliss: the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts (perhaps to the point of a certain boredom), unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language.

I ask for nothing but to live in my suffering.

Mourning. At the death of the loved being, acute phase of narcissism: one emerges from sickness, from servitude. Then, gradually, freedom takes on a leaden hue, desolation settles in, narcissism gives way to a sad egoism, an absence of generosity.

It must always be considered as though spoken by a character in a novel

I transform Work in its analytic meaning (the Work of Mourning, the Dream-Work) into the real Work - of writing.) for: the Work by which (it is said) we emerge from the great crises (love, grief) cannot be liquidated hastily: for me, it is accomplished only in and by writing.

There is no sadness and no cruelty in that gaze; it is a gaze without adjectives, it is only, completely, a gaze which neither judges you nor appeals to you; it posits you, implicates you; makes you exist. But this creative gesture is endless; you keep on being born, you are sustained, carried to the end of a movement which is one of infinite origin, source, and which appears in an eternal state of suspension.

Freud to his fiancée: The only thing that makes me suffer is being in a situation where it is impossible for me to prove my love to you Gide: Everything in her behaviour seemed to say: Since he no longer loves me, nothing matters to me. Now, I still loved her, and in fact I had never loved her so much; but it was no longer possible for me to prove it to her. That was much the worst thing of all

I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time.

The other's body was divided: on one side, the body proper--skin, eyes--tender, warm; and on the other side, the voice--abrupt, reserved, subject to fits of remoteness, a voice which did not give what the body gave. Or further: on one side, the soft, warm, downy. adorable body. and on the other, the ringing, well-formed. worldly voice--always the voice.

yesterday) From the terrace of the Flore, I see a woman sitting on the windowsill of the bookstore La Hune; she is holding a glass in one hand, apparently bored; the whole room behind her is filled with men, their backs to me. A cocktail party. May cocktails. A sad, depressing sensation of a seasonal and social stereotype. What comes to my mind is that maman is no longer here and life, stupid life, continues.

The text you write must prove to me that it desires me.

Everything began all over again immediately: arrival of manuscripts, requests, people's stories, each person mercilessly pushing ahead his own little demand (for love, for gratitude): No sooner has she departed than the world deafens me with its continuance.

I have a disease; I see language.

We often hear it said that it is the task of art to express the inexpressible: it is contrary which must be said (with no intention of paradox): the whole task of art is to unexpress the expressible, to kidnap from the world's language, which is the poor and powerful language of the passion, another speech, an exact speech.

Isolation and competition are inhospitable to learning.

There is nothing in discourse that is not to be found in a sentence.

To be engulfed: outburst of annihilation which affects the amorous subject in despair or fulfillment. At its best, when it's fulfillment, it's a kind of disappearance at will. An easeful death. Death liberated from dying.

As a general rule, desire is always marketable: we don't do anything but sell, buy, exchange desires. . . . And I think of Bloy's words: "there is nothing perfectly beautiful except what is invisible and above all unbuyable.

A creative writer is one for whom writing is a problem.

What affects me most powerfully: mourning in layers—a kind of sclerosis. [Which means: no depth. Layers of surface—or rather, each layer: a totality. Units]

People tell you to keep your courage up. But the time for courage is when she was sick, when I took care of her and saw her suffering, her sadness, and when I had to conceal my tears. Constantly one had to make a decision, put on a mask and that was courage. --Now, courage means the will to live and there's all too much of that.

Man does not exist prior to language, either as a species or as an individual. We never encounter a state where man is separated from language, which he then elaborates in order to 'express' what is happening to him: it is language which teaches the definition of man, not the contrary.