Edmond Jabes Quotes

• Through the ear, we shall enter the invisibility of things.

  Edmond Jabes

  Ears, Invisibility

  46 Copy quote

• It is very hard to live with silence. The real silence is death and this is terrible. To approach this silence, it is necessary to journey to the desert. You do not go to the desert to find identity, but to loses it, to lose your personality, to be anonymous. You make yourself void. You become silence. You become more silent than the silence around you. And then something extraordinary happens: you hear silence speak.

  Edmond Jabes

  Death, Real, Journey

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  Silence, Weakness, Language

  14 Copy quote

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

  Edmond Jabes

  Distance, Numbness, Emptiness

  Edmond Jabès (1993). “The Book of Margins”, p.174, University of Chicago Press

  14 Copy quote

• One rose is enough for the dawn

  Edmond Jabes

  Beauty, Rose, Dawn

  Edmond Jabès (1977). “The Book of Questions: The Book of Yukel, Return to the Book”, Wesleyan

  13 Copy quote

• Ah, the sun will catch me, in my disturbing transparency.
  What am I but an awareness of the dark, forever?

  Edmond Jabes

  Dark, Forever, Sun

  Edmond Jabes, Edmond Jabès, Rosmarie Waldrop (1991). “The Book of Questions: Volume I [The Book of Questions, The Book of Yukel, Return to the Book]”, p.398, Wesleyan University Press

  11 Copy quote

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

  Edmond Jabes

  Real, Chance

  Edmond Jabes, Edmond Jabès, Rosmarie Waldrop (1991). “The Book of Questions: Volume II [Yaël; Elya; Aely; El, Or the Last Book]”, p.46, Wesleyan University Press

  5 Copy quote

• Always in a foreign country, the poet uses poetry as an interpreter.

  Edmond Jabes

  Country, Use, Poet

  Edmond Jabès, Keith Waldrop (1988). “If There Were Anywhere But Desert: The Selected Poems of Edmond Jabès”, Barrytown/ Station Hill Press

  12 Copy quote

• As long as we are not chased from our words we have nothing to fear. As long as our utterances keep their sound we have a voice. As long as our words keep their sense we have a soul.

  Edmond Jabes

  Voice, Long, Soul

  Edmond Jabes, Edmond Jabès, Rosmarie Waldrop (1991). “The Book of Questions: Volume I [The Book of Questions, The Book of Yukel, Return to the Book]”, p.261, Wesleyan University Press

  8 Copy quote

• My hands are full when you give me your hand.

  Edmond Jabes

  Hands, Giving, Give Me

  Edmond Jabes, Edmond Jabès, Rosmarie Waldrop (1991). “The Book of Questions: Volume II [Yaël; Elya; Aely; El, Or the Last Book]”, p.147, Wesleyan University Press

  9 Copy quote

• WIDE, the margin between carte blanche and the white page. Nevertheless it is not in the margin that you can find me, but in the yet whiter one that separates the word-strewn sheet from the transparent, the written page from the one to be written in the infinite space where the eye turns back to the eye, and the hand to the pen, where all we write is erased, even as you write it. For the book imperceptibly takes shape within the book we will never finish. There is my desert.

  Edmond Jabes

  Book, Reading, Writing

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Miracle, Discovering

  Edmond Jabes, Edmond Jabès, Rosmarie Waldrop (1991). “The Book of Questions: Volume I [The Book of Questions, The Book of Yukel, Return to the Book]”, p.27, Wesleyan University Press

  11 Copy quote

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

  Edmond Jabes

  Sky, Enough, Wounds

  Edmond Jabès (1993). “The Book of Margins”, p.67, University of Chicago Press

  7 Copy quote

• To whom to speak when the other no longer is?
  The place is empty when emptiness occupies all of the place.

  Edmond Jabes

  Emptiness, Speak, Empty

  10 Copy quote

• I believe in the writer's mission. He receives it from the word, which carries its suffering and its hope within it. He questions the words, which question him. He accompanies the words, which accompany him. The initiative is shared, as if spontaneous.

  Edmond Jabes

  Believe, Suffering, Purpose

  Edmond Jabes, Edmond Jabès, Rosmarie Waldrop (1991). “The Book of Questions: Volume I [The Book of Questions, The Book of Yukel, Return to the Book]”, p.58, Wesleyan University Press

  9 Copy quote

• The soul has words as petals.

  Edmond Jabes

  Soul, Petals

  Edmond Jabes, Edmond Jabès, Rosmarie Waldrop (1991). “The Book of Questions: Volume I [The Book of Questions, The Book of Yukel, Return to the Book]”, p.61, Wesleyan University Press

  9 Copy quote

• By the light of our insistent truths we wander into death

  Edmond Jabes

  Light, Wander

  4 Copy quote

• How could an argument soothe or settle a controversy when every word is a nest for a bird of doubt? (meaning of words as inferences)

  Edmond Jabes

  Bird, Doubt, Nests

  16 Copy quote

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

  Edmond Jabes

  Creativity, Creative, Certainty

  Edmond Jabès (1977). “The Book of Questions: The Book of Yukel, Return to the Book”, Wesleyan

  8 Copy quote

• THE WRITER can get free of his writing only by using it, that is, by reading oneself. As if the aim of writing were to use what is already written as a launching pad for reading the writing to come. Moreover, what he has written is read in the process, hence constantly modified by his reading. The book is an unbearable totality. I write against a background of facets.

  Edmond Jabes

  Book, Reading, Writing

  10 Copy quote

• God, on the other side of my table, composes His book whose smoke envelops me: for the flame of my candle is His pen.

  Edmond Jabes

  Book, Flames, Burning

  Edmond Jabès (1993). “The Book of Margins”, p.38, University of Chicago Press

  7 Copy quote

• In the morning, you tear up the pages of your fever, but every word naturally leads you back to its color, its night.

  Edmond Jabes

  Morning, Night, Color

  Edmond Jabes, Edmond Jabès, Rosmarie Waldrop (1991). “The Book of Questions: Volume II [Yaël; Elya; Aely; El, Or the Last Book]”, p.219, Wesleyan University Press

  7 Copy quote

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

  Edmond Jabes

  Book, Solitude, Littles

  7 Copy quote

• Wound me . . . I can only feed on my humiliated blood.

  Edmond Jabes

  Blood, Humiliated, I Can

  7 Copy quote

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

  Edmond Jabes

  Book, Writing, Unbearable

  Edmond Jabès (1993). “The Book of Margins”, p.11, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

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