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He who reads a story only once is condemned to read the same story his whole life.

Roland Barthes

All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.
ROLAND BARTHES

Death Determination Photography Young
We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.
ROLAND BARTHES

Common Deep Intelligence Known Name Philosophy Sense War
Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?
ROLAND BARTHES

Afford Appearance Body Erotic Glimpse
The best principals are not heroes; they are hero makers.
ROLAND BARTHES

Creation Education School
The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself).
ROLAND BARTHES

Bliss Desire Language Oneself Science Writing
Physically, the Ventoux is dreadful. Bald, it’s the spirit of Dry: Its climate (it is much more an essence of climate than a geographic place) makes it a damned terrain, a testing place for heroes, something like a higher hell.
ROLAND BARTHES

Essence Hell Heroes High Place
How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there beyond?
ROLAND BARTHES

Beyond Image Meaning
To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not–this is the beginning of writing.
ROLAND BARTHES

Beginning Known Love Myself Writing
It must always be considered as though spoken by a character in a novel
ROLAND BARTHES

Character Consider Myself Novel
To eat, to speak, to sing (need we add: to kiss?) are operations which have the same site of the body for origin.
ROLAND BARTHES

Body Eat Origin Sing Talk
Architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.
ROLAND BARTHES

Architecture Convenience Dreams Function Instrument
Thus every writer’s motto reads: mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am.
ROLAND BARTHES

Design Myself Reading Writing
The Ventoux is a god of Evil, to which sacrifices must be made. It never forgives weakness and extracts an unfair tribute of suffering.
ROLAND BARTHES

Evil Forgiveness God Ourselves Suffering Weakness
Why is it better to last than to burn?
ROLAND BARTHES

Better Burn Last Myself
The book creates meaning, the meaning creates life.
ROLAND BARTHES

Creation Life Meaning
The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.
ROLAND BARTHES

Born Cost Death Reading

He who reads a story only once is condemned to read the same story his whole life.

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He who reads a story only once is condemned to read the same story his whole life.

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