Roland Barthes Quotes

Flaubert had infinite correction to perform.

The author enters into his own death, writing begins.

To make someone wait: the constant prerogative of all power, "age-old pastime of humanity".

Miseries of a birth.

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

A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see.

If I like a photograph, if it disturbs me, I linger over it. What am I doing, during the whole times I remain with it? I look at it, I scrutinize it, as if I wanted to know more about the thing or the person it represents... I want to outline the loved face by thought, to make it into the unique field of an intense observation; I want to enlarge this face in order to see it better, to understand it better, to know its truth.

It is by studium that I am interested in so many photographs, whether I receive them as political testimony or enjoy them as good historical scenes: for it is culturally (this connotation is present in studium) that I participate in the figures, the faces, the gestures, the settings, the actions.