Happy Valentine's Day

My favorite quotations from French theorist Roland Barthes ...

“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.”
-- "Inexpressible Love," A Lover's Discourse (1977, trans. 1979)

“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.”
-- "Dark Glasses," sect. 2, A Lover's Discourse (1977, trans. 1979)

"What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself."
-- Mythologies, "Le monde où l'on catche," (1957)

“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.”
-- "Talking," A Lover's Discourse (1977, trans. 1978)

And of course Barry makes everything all right. =D