Anne Carson Quotes

Consider incompleteness as a verb.

Each night about this time he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing.

All myth is an enriched pattern, a two-faced proposition, allowing its operator to say one thing and mean another, to lead a double life.

M: Is he smart I: She yes very smart sees right through me M: In my day we valued blindness rather more

Up against another human being one's own procedures take on definition

We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing (whatever it is) that glitters on the earth-- we call it life.

At least half of your mind is always thinking, I'll be leaving; this won't last. It's a good Buddhist attitude. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I'm just sad.

Here we go mother on the shipless ocean. Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.

Philosophy - hopeless. Yet it gives me hope.

Love is a good place to situate our distrust of fake women.

Homer must have felt this pressure to come up with an epic poem that would sound totally new to an audience that had loved his previous best-seller.

I do think I have an ability to record sensual and emotional facts and factoids, to construct a convincing surface of what life feels like, both physical life and emotional life.

We participate in the creation of the world by decreating ourselves.

I don't read reviews and I don't know what to do with opinions, so I just lose them. They take up space, they become a process of manufacturing a persona, which I want to avoid.

I mean, every thought starts over, so every expression of a thought has to do the same. every accuracy has to be invented... I feel I am blundering in concepts too fine for me.

Maybe I could have been good as a drawer if I had done it as much as I did writing, but it's more scary to draw. It's more revealing. You can't disguise yourself in drawing.

Aristotle says that metaphor causes the mind to experience itself in the act of making a mistake.

he stood against the wind and let it peel him clean

Everything depends on liking the people and trusting the people. You have to assume that whatever they do will be as good as you want the thing to be and just go ahead with that.

The man has a theory. The woman has hipbones. Here comes Death.

Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.

Existence will not stop until it gets to beauty.

It takes practice to shave the skin off the light.

No one will ever make necessity not happen.

Desire is no light thing.

You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.

It is for God to fix the time who knows no time.

I never had much education in English poetry as such.

Life pulls softly inside your bindings. The pod glows - dear stench.

I never really got over the fun of making letters.

You can get used to eating breakfast with a man in a fedora. You can get used to anything, my mother was in the habit of saying.

When I began to be published, people got the idea that I should 'teach writing,' which I have no idea how to do and don't really believe in.

LIII.What is the holiness of conversation? It isto master death.

Here we go mother on the shipless ocean.Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.

Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me.Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.

XXIV. And kneeling at the edge of the transparent sea I shall shape for myself a new heart from salt and mud

Kreon: here are Kreon's verbs for todayAdjudicateLegislateScandalizeCapitalizehere are Kreon's nounsMenReasonTreasonDeathShip of StateMineChorus: "mine" isn't a nounKreon: it is if you capitalize it

I will not stop singingthe Muses who set me dancing.

all the tall mad mountains of her mind

Friends disappear or they are powerless. This is what misfortune meansan acid test of friendship.I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Come here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you.Have you given much thought to our mortal condition?Probably not. Why would you? Well, l

Pilgrims were people glad to take off their clothing, which was on fire.

...I am talking about evil.It blooms.It eats.It grins.

She stumbled then and Geryon caught her other arm, it was like a handful of autumn. He felt huge and wrong. When is it polite to let go someone’s arm after you grab it?

Like honey is the sleep of the just.

But when justice is done the world drops away.

Are there many little boys who think they are a Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the Dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded himJoyfully

To be a prophet, Knox emphasizes, requires living in and looking at the present, at what is really going on around you.

at the bottom of the ocean is a layer of water that has never moved…

He had a respect for facts maybe this was one.