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The discourse on the Text should itself be nothing other than text, research, textual activity, since the Text is that social space which leaves no language safe, outside, nor any subject of the enunciation in position as judge, master, analyst, confessor, decoder. The theory of the Text can coincide only with a practice of writing.

— Roland Barthes

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More quotes by Roland Barthes

What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.

Mythologies (1957)

A work has two levels of meaning: literal and concealed.

The petit-bourgeois is a man unable to imagine the Other. If he comes face to face with him, he blinds himself, ignores and denies him, or else transforms him into himself.

Mythologies (1957)

Literature is the question minus the answer.

By reducing any quality to quantity, myth economizes intelligence: it understands reality more cheaply.

Mythologies (1957)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Roland Barthes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.