Absence of the Writer ...

“Absence of the writer too. For to write is to draw back. Not to retire into one’s tent, in order to write, but to draw back from one’s writing itself. To be grounded far away from one’s language, to emancipate it or lose one’s hold on it, to let it make its way alone and unarmed. To leave speech. To let it speak alone, which it can do only in its written form. To leave writing is to be there only in order to provide its passageway, to be the diaphanous element of its going forth: everything and nothing. For the work, the writer is at once everything and nothing. Like God …” (p. 70)

(Jacques Derrida, “Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book.” Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass)