“—You have never known a Woman’s body! —I have known the body of my mother, sick and then dying.” — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
Tout refus du langage est une mort. Any refusal of language is a death. — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author. — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“As soon as someone dies, frenzied construction of the future (shifting furniture, etc.): futuromania.” — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
It is said that mourning, by its gradual labour, slowly erases pain; I could not, I cannot believe this; because for me,… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
Death of the Father would deprive literature of many of its pleasures. If there is no longer a Father, why tell stories?… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“Mourning. At the death of the loved being, acute phase of narcissism: one emerges from sickness, from servitude. Then, gradually, freedom takes… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“A cold winter night. I'm warm enough, yet I'm alone. And I realize that I'll 'have' to get used to existing quite… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“There is a time when death is an event, an ad-venture, and as such mobilizes, interests, activates, tetanizes. And then one day… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
For Death must be somewhere in a society; if it is no longer (or less intensely) in religion, it must be elsewhere;… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“To be engulfed: outburst of annihilation which affects the amorous subject in despair or fulfillment. At its best, when it’s fulfillment, it’s… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“Maman’s death: perhaps it is the one thing in my life that I have not responded to neurotically. My grief has not… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“Dreamed of maman again. She was telling me—O cruelty!—that I didn’t really love her. But I took it calmly, because I was… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“I waver—in the dark—between the observation (but is it entirely accurate?) that I’m unhappy only by moments, by jerks and surges, sporadically,… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“Werther identifies himself with the madman, with the footman. As a reader, I can identify myself with Werther. Historically, thousands of subjects have done… — Roland Barthes Copy Share
“Valéry used to speak of those people who die in an accident because they are unwilling to let go of their umbrellas; how many… — Roland Barthes Copy Share
Today there is no symbolic compensation for old age, no recognition of a specific value: wisdom, perceptiveness, experience, vision. — Roland Barthes Copy Share
The unary Photograph has every reason to be banal, 'unity' of composition being the first rule of vulgar (and notably, of academic) rhetoric: 'The… — Roland Barthes Copy Share
“Man does not exist prior to language, either as a species or as an individual. We never encounter a state where man is separated… — Roland Barthes Copy Share
“It is said that Time soothes mourning – No, Time makes nothing happen; it merely makes the emotivity of mourning pass.” — Roland Barthes Copy Share
“So long as I perceive the world as hostile, I remain linked to it: *I am not crazy*. But sometimes, once my bad temper… — Roland Barthes Copy Share
I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived… — Roland Barthes Copy Share
“(Sartre) (The world is full without me, as in Nausea; the world plays at living behind a glass partition; the world is in an… — Roland Barthes Copy Share
“Like love, mourning affects the world—and the worldly—with unreality, with importunity. I resist the world, I suffer from what it demands of me, from… — Roland Barthes Copy Share
“There is an age at which we teach what we know. Then comes another age at which we teach what we do not know;… — Roland Barthes Copy Share
As a jealous man, I suffer four times over: because I am jealous, because I blame myself for being so, because I fear that… — Roland Barthes Copy Share
