It can also happen that an author will kill himself or herself writing. the only book that is worth writing is the one we don't have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed. It is combat against ourselves, the author; one of us must be vanquished or die...
What torments me is that the person who writes and who is sensitive to this kind of danger cannot not have the desire to die. The desire to die is the one thing in the world we cannot permit ourselves to admit; I am not talking about suicide: the desire to die and the temptation of suicide are two different things; suicide is murder, suicide is aimed at someone or something, whereas the desire to die is not this at all - which is why we can't talk about it.
The desire to die is the desire to know; it is not the desire to disappear, and it is not suicide; it is the desire to enjoy.
-Hélène Cixous. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. 32-34.
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