Literature is without proofs. 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
What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth. – Roland Barthes
Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure. – Roland Barthes
To dope the racer is as criminal, as sacrilegious, as trying to imitate God; it is stealing from God the privilege of the spark. – Roland Barthes
Readers of novels. I sometimes think that I could, if put to it, pick the real readers of novels out of a crowd. They have a strangeness about the eye, almost as if there were an extra bit of lens on the cornea…. The glance of a reader shows me a soul with a different orientation to time… – Sven Birkerts (b.1951), “Notes from a Confession,” The Agni Review, No.22 (1985)