black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.

Roland Barthes

Television doomed us to the Family, whose household instrument it has become-what the hearth used to be, flanked by the communal kettle.
ROLAND BARTHES

Community Family Instrument Television
The book creates meaning, the meaning creates life.
ROLAND BARTHES

Creation Life Meaning
It must always be considered as though spoken by a character in a novel
ROLAND BARTHES

Character Consider Myself Novel
Painting can feign reality without having seen it.
ROLAND BARTHES

Myself Painting Reality See
Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula.
ROLAND BARTHES

Bliss Image Knowledge Mythology World
Language is neither reactionary nor progressive; it is quite simply fascist; for fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech.
ROLAND BARTHES

Language Prevent Progression Speech
It is no longer the sexual which is indecent, it is the sentimental.
ROLAND BARTHES

Emotional Sexuality
Who speaks is not who writes, and who writes is not who is.
ROLAND BARTHES

Literature Poet Talk Writing
The photographer, like an acrobat, must defy the laws of probability or even of possibility; at the limit, he must defy those of the interesting: the photograph becomes surprising when we do not know why it has been taken.
ROLAND BARTHES

Known Law Limitation Photography Possible
This endured absence is nothing more or less than forgetfulness. I am, intermittently, unfaithful. This is the condition of my survival.
ROLAND BARTHES

Absence Condition Endurance Faith Myself Survival
Man does not exist prior to language, either as a species or as an individual.
ROLAND BARTHES

Existence Language Man Position
As Spectator I wanted to explore photography not as a question (a theme) but as a wound.
ROLAND BARTHES

Exploration Myself Photography Question Wound
We can never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, every origin. Writing is that neuter, that composite, that obliquity into which our subject flees, the black-and-white where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.
ROLAND BARTHES

Body Destruction Goodness Identity Known Subject Voice Writing
I make the other’s absence responsible for my worldliness.
ROLAND BARTHES

Absence Myself Responsibility World
A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see.
ROLAND BARTHES

Invisible Photograph See
We don’t forget, but something vacant settles in us.
ROLAND BARTHES

Forget Ourselves Settle

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Roland Barthes Quotes