The Step Not Beyond Quotes

“The anonymous puts the name in place, leaves it empty, as if the name were there only to let itself be passed through because the name does not name, but is the non-unity and non-presence of the nameless.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond

“Weak thoughts, weak desires: he felt their force.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond

“Between them, the fear, the fear shared in common, and, through the fear, the abyss of fear over which they join one another without being able to do so, dying, each alone, of fear.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond

“Writing is not destined to leave traces, but to erase, by traces, all traces, to disappear in the fragmentary space of writing more definitely than one disappears in the tomb.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond

“The awareness at each moment of what is intolerable in the world (tortures, oppression, unhappiness, hunger, the camps) is not tolerable: it bends, sinks, and he who exposes himself to it sinks with it. The awareness is not awareness in general. All knowledge of what everywhere is intolerable will at once lead knowledge astray. We live thus between straying and a half-sleep. To know this is already enough to stray.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond

“One's thinking about me makes me feel this self; one's not thinking about me leaves me in this self that exceeds me."-"At least disappear in this thought.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond