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 CARSONThe self forms at the edge of desire, and a science of self arises in the effort to leave that self behind.
More Anne Carson Quotes
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When an ecstatic is asked the question, What is it that love dares the self to do? she will answer: Love dares the self to leave itself behind, to enter into poverty.
ANNE CARSON -
Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.
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 -
A page with a poem on it is less attractive than a page with a poem on it and some tea stains.
ANNE CARSON -
No need to fear death. There will be a tunnel and light.
ANNE CARSON -
Madness and witchery as well as bestiality are conditions commonly associated with the use of the female voice in public.
ANNE CARSON -
What makes life life and not a simple story? Jagged bits moving never still, all along the wall.
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 -
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 -
Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.
ANNE CARSON -
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 CARSON -
Sometimes I dream a sentence and write it down. It’s usually nonsense, but sometimes it seems a key to another world.
ANNE CARSON -
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.
ANNE CARSON -
What is the fear inside language? No accident of the body can make it stop burning.
ANNE CARSON -
Under the seams runs the pain.
ANNE CARSON