Edmond Jabes Quotes

“Silence is no weakness of language.
It is, on the contrary, its strength.
It is the weakness of words not to know this.”

— Edmond Jabes

“To whom to speak when the other no longer is?
The place is empty when emptiness occupies all of the place.”

— Edmond Jabes

“For the writer, discovering the work he will write is both like a miracle
and a wound, like the miracle of the wound.”

— Edmond Jabes

“God, on the other side of my table, composes His book whose smoke envelops me: for the flame of my candle is His pen.”

— Edmond Jabes

One rose is enough for the dawn

— Edmond Jabes

“I believe in the writer's mission. He receives it from the word, which carries its suffering and its hope within it. He questions the words, which question him. He accompanies the words, which accompany him. The initiative is shared, as if spontaneous.”

— Edmond Jabes

Always in a foreign country, the poet uses poetry as an interpreter.

— Edmond Jabes

My hands are full when you give me your hand.

— Edmond Jabes

“It is not certainty which is creative, but the uncertainty we are pledged to in our works.”

— Edmond Jabes

“Ah, the sun will catch me, in my disturbing transparency.
What am I but an awareness of the dark, forever?”

— Edmond Jabes

“We do not truly speak except at a distance. There is no word not severed.”

— Edmond Jabes

“How could an argument soothe or settle a controversy when every word is a nest for a bird of doubt? (meaning of words as inferences)”

— Edmond Jabes

“Wound me ... I can only feed on my humiliated blood.”

— Edmond Jabes

“By the light of our insistent truths we wander into death”

— Edmond Jabes

“THE WRITER can get free of his writing only by using it, that is, by reading oneself. As if the aim of writing were to use what is already written as a launching pad for reading the writing to come. Moreover, what he has written is read in the process, hence constantly modified by his reading. The book is an unbearable totality. I write against a background of facets.”

— Edmond Jabes

“As long as we are not chased from our words we have nothing to fear. As long as our utterances keep their sound we have a voice. As long as our words keep their sense we have a soul.”

— Edmond Jabes

One wound is enough to feed the open wounds of the sky.

— Edmond Jabes