Roland Barthes Quotes

I have nothing to do with anything that happens to me.

I like the probability of the impossible.

Being ambivalent doesn't mean that you're a relevatist, that anything goes; it just means that you show the complexity of life. Life is always complex.

In Chekhov, everything blends into its opposite, just fractionally, and this is sort of unsettling. And that's why you end up 100 years later asking, 'Is that moment tragic or comic?'

If it is, it is, If it's not, it's not.

My style says, 'Look at me, don't look at me.'

I've ceased making predictions on things because we'll see how they turn out.

We fear the thing we want the most.

I've said things and meant them, but I'm obviously a very confused person who has no idea how they feel about things.

Once you accept, truly accept, that stuff will happen to you and there is nothing you can do about it, stress miraculously leaves your life.

All of these mechanisms we have for celebrating are so double-edged. So much sorrow comes out of joy.

Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity.

I made up my mind, but I made it up both ways.

The major problem for us in the 21st century is to be comfortable with ambiguity.

The best ideas make you want to say 'yes' and 'no' in the same breath.

There are gray areas in everything.

Would I change anything? I don't know, that's a double edge sword for me.

I've never had any intentions about anything. That's why I am where I am today, which is neither here nor there, in a literal sense.

The more you play it the less you know about it.

I don't mind what happens.

Sweet Skepticism of the Heart That knows and does not know And tosses like a Fleet of Balm Affronted by the snow.

There are “well-known secrets” out there and there are people who are “so happy they could die.” Sometimes people are so sad they have to laugh and sometimes things feel so wrong, they’re right. Basically what I’m saying is, I usually don’t know what people are talking about.

Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and of fear.

Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.