Literature is the question minus the answer.
ROLAND BARTHESLiterature is the question minus the answer.
ROLAND BARTHESThe 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 BARTHESMan does not exist prior to language, either as a species or as an individual.
ROLAND BARTHESLanguage is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.
ROLAND BARTHESEach of us has his own rhythm of suffering.
ROLAND BARTHESThrough the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula.
ROLAND BARTHESIsn’t desire always the same, whether the object is present or absent? Isn’t the object always absent? -This isn’t the same languor: there are two words: Pothos, desire for the absent being, and Himéros, the more burning desire for the present being.
ROLAND BARTHESI am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.
ROLAND BARTHESHe who reads a story only once is condemned to read the same story his whole life.
ROLAND BARTHESWhere you are tender, you speak your plural.
ROLAND BARTHESDon’t say mourning. It’s too psychoanalytic. I’m not mourning. I’m suffering.
ROLAND BARTHESThe birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.
ROLAND BARTHESA light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.
ROLAND BARTHESIf I acknowledge my dependency, I do so because for me it is a means of signifying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a “weakness” or an “absurdity”: it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength.)
ROLAND BARTHESTo 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 BARTHESThe haiku reproduces the designating gesture of the child pointing at whatever it is (the haiku shows no partiality for the subject), merely saying: that!
ROLAND BARTHES