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, from A
Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (Hill and Wang, 1978)
Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (Hill and Wang, 1978)