Maurice Blanchot Quotes

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.

It is not good to talk about Zen, because Zen is nothingness... If you talk about it, you are always lying, and if you don't talk about it, no one knows it is there.

For some moments in life there are no words.

I am always trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.

One feels 'the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech' in trying to describe things intangible.

Whatever can't be expressed might as well not exist.

The best things cannot be told because they transcend thought. The second best are misunderstood because they are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which cannot be thought about. The third best are what we talk about.

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

No one's mouth is big enough to utter the whole thing.

What can be said, lacks reality. Only what fails to make its way into words exists and counts.

How pathetic it is to describe these things which can't truly be described.

I love that moment in writing when language falls short. There is something more there. A larger body. Even by the failure of words I begin to detect its dimensions. As I work the prose, shift the verbs, look for new adjectives, a different rhythm, syntax, something new begins to come to the surface.

Well might the ancients make silence a god; for it is the element of all godhood, infinitude, or transcendental greatness,--at once the source and the ocean wherein all such begins and ends.

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, But love unexplained is clearer.

I will never fully understand; that is the nature of such creatures. Or is this Inner Truth now, this that is happening to me? I will wait. I will see. Which it is. Perhaps it is both.

Maybe it's true what Thomas Moore said: “It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed.

Behold this little Bane- The Boon of all alive- As common as it is unknown The name of it is Love.

Speech is the organ of this present world. Silence is the mystery of the world to come.

Words spoken about the Way have no taste. When looked at, there's not enough to see. When listened to, there's not enough to hear. When used, it is never exhausted.

We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.