Literature is that neuter, that...

Literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.

- Roland Barthes

The Death of the Author

author literature writing

Other quotes by Roland Barthes

Literature is like phosphorus: it shines with its maximum brilliance and the moment when it attempts to die.

- Roland Barthes

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

Don't say mourning. It's too psychoanalytic. I'm not mourning. I'm suffering.

- Roland Barthes

Paradoxically (since people say: Work, amuse yourself, see friends) it’s when we’re busy, distracted, sought out, exteriorized, that we suffer most. Inwardness, calm, solitude makes us less miserable.

- Roland Barthes

I transform "Work" in its analytic meaning (the Work of Mourning, the Dream-Work) into the real "Work" - of writing.

- Roland Barthes

In this manner , we are told, the system of the imaginary is spread circularly, by detours and returns the length of an empty subject.

- Roland Barthes

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