Literature is that which he can not read without pain, without choking on truth. — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
Those who fail to reread are obliged to read the same story everywhere. — 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
“Literature is like phosphorus: it shines with its maximum brilliance and the moment when it attempts to die.” — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
Literature is without proofs. By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“We know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
Whereas the work is understood to be traceable to a source (through a process of derivation or "filiation"), the Text is without… — 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
“To read is to struggle to name, to subject the sentences of a text to a semantic transformation. This transformation is erratic;… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“This book has two determinants: on the one hand, an ideological critique of the language of so-called mass culture; on the other,… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“As Narrative (Novel, Passion), love is a story which is accomplished, in the sacred sense of the word: it is a program… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“In the letters he sends to his friend, Werther recounts both the events of his life and the effects of his passion;… — 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
“Werther identifies himself with the madman, with the footman. As a reader, I can identify myself with Werther. Historically, thousands of subjects… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
It must always be considered as though spoken by a character in a novel — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“Literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with… — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
Literature can no longer be either Mimesis or Mathesis but merely Semiosis, the adventure of what is impossible to language, in a… — 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 Image
“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 Image
Today there is no symbolic compensation for old age, no recognition of a specific value: wisdom, perceptiveness, experience, vision. — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“It is said that Time soothes mourning – No, Time makes nothing happen; it merely makes the emotivity of mourning pass.” — Roland Barthes Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“(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 Image
“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 Image
