Roland Barthes — The Vale of Soul-Making

To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not–this is the beginning of writing.

— Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. (Hill and Wang; Second Printing edition June 1, 1979) Originally published 1977.

Roland Barthes — The Vale of Soul-Making