The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event. - (Barthes, Roland - Acting and Actors)

Other countries drink to get drunk, and this is accepted by everyone; in France, drunkenness is a consequence, never an intention. A drink is felt as the spinning out of a pleasure, not as the necessary cause of an effect which is sought: wine is not only a philter, it is also the leisurely act of drinking. - (Barthes, Roland - Alcohol and Alcoholism)

There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it. - (Barthes, Roland - Alienation)

I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object. - (Barthes, Roland - Automobiles)

Historically and politically, the petit-bourgeois is the key to the century. The bourgeois and proletariat classes have become abstractions: the petite-bourgeoisie, in contrast, is everywhere, you can see it everywhere, even in the areas of the bourgeois and the proletariat, what's left of them. - (Barthes, Roland - Class)

The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized! - (Barthes, Roland - Interviews)

Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. - (Barthes, Roland - Language)

All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology. - (Barthes, Roland - Language)

There are two kinds of liberalism. A liberalism which is always, subterraneously authoritative and paternalistic, on the side of one's good conscience. And then there is a liberalism which is more ethical than political; one would have to find another name for this. Something like a profound suspension of judgment. - (Barthes, Roland - Liberals)

Literature is without proofs. By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that it is worth the trouble of saying it. - (Barthes, Roland - Literature)

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished. - (Barthes, Roland - Love)

Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion. - (Barthes, Roland - Myth)

The New is not a fashion, it is a value. - (Barthes, Roland - Novelty)

To hide a passion totally (or even to hide, more simply, its excess) is inconceivable: not because the human subject is too weak, but because passion is in essence made to be seen: the hiding must be seen: I want you to know that I am hiding something from you, that is the active paradox I must resolve: at one and the same time it must be known and not known: I want you to know that I don't want to show my feelings: that is the message I address to the other. - (Barthes, Roland - Passion)

The photographic image... is a message without a code. - (Barthes, Roland - Photography)