In writing one draws in the rest, the forgotten parts.

The imagination is not the consolation people pretend. It can even be regarded as the admission of some sort of failure.

At certain crucial moments - an emergency or an opportunity - one must act first and think later.

Dreadful is a poignant biography of a forgotten man who drank himself to death. It's a brilliant evocation of a self-hating gay novelist in the 1940s whom Gore Vidal once considered a rival.

What is new about Barthes's posthumous reputation is the view of him as a writer whose books of criticism and personal musings must be admired as serious and beautiful works of the imagination.

In writing one draws in the rest, the forgotten parts.

I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my experimental technique.