Roland Barthes

French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, semiotician. –My language trembles with desire.

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

Your vigilance as an artist is an amorous vigilance, a vigilance of desire.

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

I keep tormenting myself with the thought, desire, regret, and rage of the Other;

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

and I add to these wounds the discouragement of having to acknowledge that I am falling back, relapsing...

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

no, this is not a relapse, only a last soubresaut, a final convulsion...

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

For me the noise of Time is not sad...

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

This endured absence is nothing more or less than forgetfulness. I am, intermittently, unfaithful. This is the condition of my survival.

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

The anxieties are already here, like the poison already prepared (jealousy, abandonment, restlessness);

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

they merely wait for a little time to pass in order to be able to declare themselves with some propriety.

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

I pick up a book and take a sleeping pill, "calmly."

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

(faint murmur of draining bathtubs); the furniture and the lamps are stupid;

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

nothing friendly that might warm ("I'm cold, let's go back to Paris)

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

silence is echoing

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

My anxieties as to behavior are futile, ever more so, to infinity.

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

What is futile is what apparently has and will have no consequence.

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

But for me, an amorous subject, everything which is new, everything which disturbs, is received not as a fact

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

but in the aspect of a sign which must be interpreted. From the lover's point of view, the fact becomes consequential

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

because it is immediately transformed into a sign: it is the sign, not the fact, which is consequential (by its aura).

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

Literature is without proofs.

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that it is worth the trouble of saying it.

[Roland Barthes @_roland_barthes]

Everything signifies: by this proposition, I entrap myself, I bind myself in calculations, I keep myself from enjoyment.