Maurice Blanchot

“How not to search that space where, for a time span lasting from dusk to dawn, two beings have no other reason…

— Maurice Blanchot

But my silence is real. If I hid it from you, you would find it again a little farther on.

— Maurice Blanchot

“As the German expression has it, the last judgement is the youngest day, and it is a day surpassing all days. Not…

— Maurice Blanchot

“Writing is not destined to leave traces, but to erase, by traces, all traces, to disappear in the fragmentary space of writing…

— Maurice Blanchot

“If the sculptor uses stone and if the road builder also uses stone, the first uses it in a way that it…

— Maurice Blanchot

A writer who writes, ''I am alone''... can be considered rather comical. It is comical for a man to recognize his solitude…

— Maurice Blanchot

“I went in; I closed the door. I sat down on the bed. Blackest space extended before me. I was not in…

— Maurice Blanchot

“But this is the rule, and there is no way to free oneself of it: as soon as the thought has arisen,…

— Maurice Blanchot

The Journal is not essentially a confession, a story about oneself. It is a Memorial. What does the writer have to remember?…

— Maurice Blanchot

We can never put enough distance between ourselves and what we love. To think that God is, is still to think of…

— Maurice Blanchot

A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain face to face with…

— Maurice Blanchot

Lovers of painting and lovers of music are people who openly display their preference like a delectable ailment that isolates them and…

— Maurice Blanchot

“When Kafka allows a friend to understand that he writes because otherwise he would go mad, he knows that writing is madness…

— Maurice Blanchot

“The anonymous puts the name in place, leaves it empty, as if the name were there only to let itself be passed…

— Maurice Blanchot

If nothing were substituted for everything, it would still be too much and too little.

— Maurice Blanchot

What if what has been said one time not only does not cease to be said but always recommences, and not only…

— Maurice Blanchot

My being subsists only from a supreme point of view which is precisely incompatible with my point of view. The perspective in…

— Maurice Blanchot

A story? No. No stories, never again.

— Maurice Blanchot

I lean over you, your equal, offering you a mirror for your perfect nothingness, for your shadows which are neither light nor…

— Maurice Blanchot

I wanted to see something in full daylight; I was sated with the pleasure and comfort of the half light; I had…

— Maurice Blanchot

“A word may give me its meaning, but first it suppresses it. For me to be able to say, 'This woman' I…

— Maurice Blanchot

Every artist is linked to a mistake with which he has a particular intimate relation. There is the mistake of Homer, of…

— Maurice Blanchot

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking - and since it cannot, in order to become…

— Maurice Blanchot

“What does it remember? Itself, death as memory. An immense memory in which one dies. First to forget. To remember only where…

— Maurice Blanchot

Every artist is linked to a mistake with which he has a particular intimacy. All art draws its origin from an exceptional…

— Maurice Blanchot