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)

  55 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.

  93 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.

  61 Copy quote

• ...language is never innocent.

  Roland Barthes

  Language, Innocent

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

  65 Copy quote

• Every photograph is a certificate of presence.

  Roland Barthes

  Photograph, Certificates

  9 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.

  12 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

  11 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

  7 Copy quote

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

  Roland Barthes

  War, Names, Common Sense

  41 Copy quote

• Literature is the question minus the answer.

  Roland Barthes

  Art, Healing, Poetry

  29 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

  60 Copy quote

• A light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.

  Roland Barthes

  Light, Shadow, Emotion

  Roland Barthes (1973). “Mythologies”

  28 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

  35 Copy quote

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

  Roland Barthes

  Writing, Speak

  6 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

  10 Copy quote

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

  Roland Barthes

  Photography, Messages, Code

  41 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

  9 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

  53 Copy quote

• All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.

  Roland Barthes

  Sports, Song, School

  17 Copy quote

• I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.

  Roland Barthes

  Language, Seducing, Wounds

  56 Copy quote

• All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.

  Roland Barthes

  Agents, World, Determined

  6 Copy quote

• I encounter millions of bodies in my life; of these millions, I may desire some hundreds; but of these hundreds, I love only one.

  Roland Barthes

  Desire, Encounters, Body

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

  15 Copy quote

• I love you is unsubtle. It removes explanations, facilities, degrees, scruples.

  Roland Barthes

  Love You, Degrees, Scruples

  4 Copy quote

• Painting can feign reality without having seen it.

  Roland Barthes

  Reality, Painting

  12 Copy quote

• Isn’t desire always the same, whether the object is present or absent? Isn’t the object always absent? —This isn’t the same languor: there are two words: Pothos, desire for the absent being, and Himéros, the more burning desire for the present being.

  Roland Barthes

  Two, Desire, Burning

  27 Copy quote

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