Roland Barthes Quotes

Quotes about:

• The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

  Roland Barthes

  Book, Cost, Birth

  "The Death of the Author" (1968)

  60 Copy quote

• Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion.

  Roland Barthes

  Lying, Confession, Myth

  Roland Barthes (1973). “Mythologies”

  12 Copy quote

• The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.

  Roland Barthes

  Culture, Tissues, Centre

  11 Copy quote

• To make someone wait: the constant prerogative of all power.

  Roland Barthes

  Waiting, Constant, Prerogative

  Roland Barthes (1990). “A lover's discourse: fragments”, Penguin Books

  19 Copy quote

• How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there beyond?

  Roland Barthes

  Doe, Ends, Ifs

  15 Copy quote

• Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.

  Roland Barthes

  Sad, Grief, Bereavement

  "Camera Lucida". Book by Roland Barthes, www.theguardian.com. 1980.

  68 Copy quote

• Every exploration is an appropriation.

  Roland Barthes

  Exploration, Appropriation

  Roland Barthes (1997). “The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies”, p.14, Univ of California Press

  16 Copy quote

• The Text is plural. Which is not simply to say that it has several meanings, but that it accomplishes the very plural of meaning: an irreducible (and not merely an acceptable) plural. The Text is not a co-existence of meanings but a passage, an overcrossing; thus it answers not to an interpretation, even a liberal one, but to an explosion, a dissemination.

  Roland Barthes

  Answers, Explosions, Interpretation

  "From Work to Text". Book by Roland Barthes. Proposition 4, 1971.

  17 Copy quote

• Literature is the question minus the answer.

  Roland Barthes

  Art, Healing, Poetry

  35 Copy quote

• 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.

  Roland Barthes

  Desire, Skins, Language And Power

  "A Lover's Discourse (Talking)". Bok by Roland Barthes, 1977.

  97 Copy quote

• The author enters into his own death, writing begins.

  Roland Barthes

  Writing

  Roland Barthes, Richard Howard (1989). “Bruissement de la Langue”, p.49, Univ of California Press

  14 Copy quote

• We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.

  Roland Barthes

  War, Names, Common Sense

  47 Copy quote

• ...language is never innocent.

  Roland Barthes

  Language, Innocent

  Roland Barthes (1984). “Writing degree zero ; &, Elements of semiology”, Random House (UK)

  70 Copy quote

• Every photograph is a certificate of presence.

  Roland Barthes

  Photograph, Certificates

  13 Copy quote

• Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.

  Roland Barthes

  Speech, Language, Forget

  39 Copy quote

• Where you are tender, you speak your plural.

  Roland Barthes

  Speak, Where You Are

  Roland Barthes (1990). “A lover's discourse: fragments”, Penguin Books

  7 Copy quote

• Am I in love? --yes, since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.

  Roland Barthes

  Games, Play, Waiting

  66 Copy quote

• The Text is not a definitive object.

  Roland Barthes

  Objects

  "From Work to Text". Book by Roland Barthes. Proposition 1, 1971.

  5 Copy quote

• We don't forget, but something vacant settles in us.

  Roland Barthes

  Forget, Settling, Vacant

  22 Copy quote

• Is the scene always visual? It can be aural, the frame can be linguistic: I can fall in love with a sentence spoken to me: and not only because it says something which manages to touch my desire, but because of its syntactical turn (framing), which will inhabit me like a memory.

  Roland Barthes

  Falling In Love, Memories, Desire

  Roland Barthes (1990). “A lover's discourse: fragments”, Penguin Books

  6 Copy quote

• A light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.

  Roland Barthes

  Light, Shadow, Emotion

  Roland Barthes (1973). “Mythologies”

  33 Copy quote

• The photographic image... is a message without a code.

  Roland Barthes

  Photography, Messages, Code

  46 Copy quote

• Who speaks is not who writes, and who writes is not who is.

  Roland Barthes

  Writing, Speak

  11 Copy quote

• Man does not exist prior to language, either as a species or as an individual.

  Roland Barthes

  Men, Doe, Language

  Roland Barthes, Richard Howard (1989). “Bruissement de la Langue”, p.13, Univ of California Press

  58 Copy quote

• The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star.

  Roland Barthes

  Stars, Real, Missing

  13 Copy quote

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