The words we read and words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbols never perfectly match. Eros is in between.
ANNE CARSONI never really got over the fun of making letters.
More Anne Carson Quotes
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It takes practice to shave the skin off the light.
ANNE CARSON -
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.
ANNE CARSON -
To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.
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Myths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against gods. In crisis their souls are visible.
ANNE CARSON -
Simply do something else and return to it later to find the problem wasn’t a problem at all. Ruptures almost always lead to a stronger project.
ANNE CARSON -
You remember too much,” my mother said to me recently. “Why hold onto all that?” And I said, “where can I put it down?
ANNE CARSON -
A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.
ANNE CARSON -
I never had much education in English poetry as such.
ANNE CARSON -
Love dares the self to leave itself behind, to enter into poverty.
ANNE CARSON -
I am kind of a curmudgeonly person, so I don’t gravitate to groups or traditions, which is probably just pretentious of me.
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Desire is no light thing.
ANNE CARSON -
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.
ANNE CARSON -
We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing (whatever it is) that glitters on the earth– we call it life.
ANNE CARSON -
You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God with the good sense to doubt me. What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us? For an instant God suspends assent and poof! we disappear.
ANNE CARSON -
A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.
ANNE CARSON