black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

All human desire is poised on an axis of paradox, absence and presence its poles, love and hate its motive energies.

Anne Carson

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.
ANNE CARSON

Angry Existence Grief Tragedy Yourself
We are only midway through the central verse of our youth when we see ourselves begin to blacken. … We had been seduced into thinking that we were immortal and suddenly the affair is over.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
You used to say. “Desire doubled is love and love doubled is madness.” Madness doubled is marriage I added when the caustic was cool, not intending to produce a golden rule.
ANNE CARSON

Desire Double Gold Love Madness Marriage Rule
I’ve come to understand that the best one can hope for as a human is to have a relationship with that emptiness where God would be if God were available, but God isn’t.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
Those nights lying alone are not discontinuous with this cold hectic dawn. It is who I am.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
It is easier to tell a story of how people wound one another than of what binds them together.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
Madness and witchery as well as bestiality are conditions commonly associated with the use of the female voice in public.
ANNE CARSON

Condition Female Madness Public Voice Witch
We participate in the creation of the world by decreating ourselves.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
They were two superior eels at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
The man has a theory. The woman has hipbones. Here comes Death.
ANNE CARSON

Death Man Theory Woman
He stood against the wind and let it peel him clean.
ANNE CARSON

Cleaning Himself Wind
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.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
My religion makes no sense and does not help me therefore I pursue it.
ANNE CARSON

Help Myself Pursue Religion
Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.
ANNE CARSON

Power Word Yourself
Under the seams runs the pain.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
Meanwhile music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
Love is a good place to situate our distrust of fake women.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
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.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
Existence will not stop until it gets to beauty.
ANNE CARSON

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

Anand Thakur
I am kind of a curmudgeonly person, so I don’t gravitate to groups or traditions, which is probably just pretentious of me.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
I am a drop of gold he would say I am molten matter returned from the core of earth to tell you interior things.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
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.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
Philosophy – hopeless. Yet it gives me hope.
ANNE CARSON

Anand Thakur
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

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

Anand Thakur

All human desire is poised on an axis of paradox, absence and presence its poles, love and hate its motive energies.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

All human desire is poised on an axis of paradox, absence and presence its poles, love and hate its motive energies.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Anne Carson Quotes