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 BARTHESWhereas the work is understood to be traceable to a source (through a process of derivation or “filiation”), the Text is without a source – the “author” a mere “guest” at the reading of the Text.
More Roland Barthes Quotes
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As Spectator I wanted to explore photography not as a question (a theme) but as a wound.
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It is no longer the sexual which is indecent, it is the sentimental.
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There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it.
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The lover’s fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.
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We don’t forget, but something vacant settles in us.
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I love you is unsubtle. It removes explanations, facilities, degrees, scruples.
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A light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.
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I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.
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Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.
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The haiku reproduces the designating gesture of the child pointing at whatever it is (the haiku shows no partiality for the subject), merely saying: that!
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Today there is no symbolic compensation for old age, no recognition of a specific value: wisdom, perceptiveness, experience, vision.
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Who speaks is not who writes, and who writes is not who is.
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This endured absence is nothing more or less than forgetfulness. I am, intermittently, unfaithful. This is the condition of my survival.
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Isn’t the most sensitive point of this mourning the fact that I must lose a language – the amorous language? No more ‘I love you’s.
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The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized!
ROLAND BARTHES






