We’re talking about the struggle to drag a thought over from the mush of the unconscious into some kind of grammar, syntax, human sense; every attempt means starting over with language. Starting over with accuracy.
ANNE CARSONThe 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.
More Anne Carson Quotes
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Aristotle says that metaphor causes the mind to experience itself in the act of making a mistake.
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We participate in the creation of the world by decreating ourselves.
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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.
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Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.
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A page with a poem on it is less attractive than a page with a poem on it and some tea stains.
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Philosophers say man forms himself in dialogue.
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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.
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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.
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Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.
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Poetry – poiesis means a thing made.
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If your way of life is writing, then everything that happens becomes a sentence.
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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.
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Meanwhile music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song.
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What makes life life and not a simple story? Jagged bits moving never still, all along the wall.
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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