Subversion Quotes by Edmond Jabès

It is very hard to live with silence. The real silence is death and this is terrible. To approach this silence, it is necessary…

— Edmond Jabes

For the writer, discovering the work he will write is both like a miracle and a wound, like the miracle of the wound.

— Edmond Jabes

By the light of our insistent truths we wander into death

— Edmond Jabes

What is not grasped has all the chances to become real.

— Edmond Jabes

My hands are full when you give me your hand.

— Edmond Jabes

We do not truly speak except at a distance. There is no word not severed.

— Edmond Jabes

Only what touches us closely preoccupies us. We prepare in solitude to face it. (The Little Book of Unsuspected Subversion)

— Edmond Jabes

Silence is no weakness of language. It is, on the contrary, its strength. It is the weakness of words not to know this.

— Edmond Jabes

The book is an unbearable totality. I write against a background of facets.

— Edmond Jabes

“In your loneliness, you hear the word from far away and then, in gratitude, look at it so closely that you cannot but drown…

— Edmond Jabès

One wound is enough to feed the open wounds of the sky.

— Edmond Jabes

It is not certainty which is creative, but the uncertainty we are pledged to in our works.

— Edmond Jabes