Anne Carson Quotes

Quotes about:

• Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.

  Anne Carson

  Want, Bounce, Ifs

  Anne Carson (1999). “Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse”, Vintage

  52 Copy quote

• One of the principle qualities of pain is that it demands an explanation.

  Anne Carson

  Pain, Quality, Principles

  39 Copy quote

• To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.

  Anne Carson

  Running, Want, Bittersweet

  Anne Carson (2014). “Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay”, p.11, Princeton University Press

  34 Copy quote

• Existence will not stop until it gets to beauty.

  Anne Carson

  Existence

  Anne Carson (2009). “The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos”, p.43, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• As Sokrates tells it, your story begins the moment Eros enters you. That incursion is the biggest risk of your life. How you handle it is an index of the quality, wisdom, and decorum of the things inside you. As you handle it you come into contact with what is inside you, in a sudden and startling way. You perceive what you are, what you lack, what you could be.

  Anne Carson

  Risk, Quality, Stories

  40 Copy quote

• To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.

  Anne Carson

  Past, Ends, Myth

  "Red Doc>". Book by Anne Carson, statement on a jacket copy, therumpus.net. 2013.

  11 Copy quote

• 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 symbola never perfectly match. Eros is in between.

  Anne Carson

  Writing, Mean, Two

  Anne Carson (2014). “Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay”, p.109, Princeton University Press

  31 Copy quote

• If your way of life is writing, then everything that happens becomes a sentence.

  Anne Carson

  Writing, Way, Life Is

  Source: www.npr.org

  20 Copy quote

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

  Anne Carson

  Grief, Tragedy, Doe

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  Mother, Too Much, Remember

  Anne Carson (1995). “Glass, Irony, and God”, p.7, New Directions Publishing

  30 Copy quote

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

  Anne Carson

  Dream, Sweet, Cheer

  11 Copy quote

• Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, between ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too,’ the absent presence of desire comes alive. But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me. And it is only, suddenly, at the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, I realize I never can.

  Anne Carson

  Love You, Self, Issues

  Anne Carson (2014). “Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay”, p.30, Princeton University Press

  30 Copy quote

• 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

  Stronger, Rupture, Return

  "An interview with Anne Carson and Robert Currie". Interview with Megan Berkobien, www.asymptotejournal.com.

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Soul, Stories

  22 Copy quote

• Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.

  Anne Carson

  Reality, Yelling, Sound

  Anne Carson (1999). “Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse”, Vintage

  14 Copy quote

• Pleasure and pain at once register upon the lover, inasmuch as the desirability of the love object derives, in part, from its lack. To whom is it lacking? To the lover. If we follow the trajectory of eros we consistently find it tracing out this same route: it moves out from the lover toward the beloved, then ricochets back to the lover himself and the hole in him, unnoticed before. Who is the subject of most love poems? Not the beloved. It is that hole.

  Anne Carson

  Love, Pain, Moving

  Anne Carson (2014). “Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay”, p.30, Princeton University Press

  28 Copy quote

• There is no person without a world.

  Anne Carson

  World, Persons

  Anne Carson (1998). “Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse”, Knopf

  6 Copy quote

• The self forms at the edge of desire, and a science of self arises in the effort to leave that self behind.

  Anne Carson

  Self, Effort, Desire

  Anne Carson (2014). “Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay”, p.39, Princeton University Press

  7 Copy quote

• Do you remember when they taught cursive in schools? I think they don't anymore. But I still enjoy it - just the physical act and all the - the whole business of making a thing out of language.

  Anne Carson

  School, Thinking, Taught

  Source: www.npr.org

  7 Copy quote

• What is a quote? A quote (cognate with quota) is a cut, a section, a slice of someone's orange. You suck the slice, toss the rind, skate away.

  Anne Carson

  Cutting, Orange, Quota

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Self, Answers, Poverty

  "Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera". Book by Anne Carson, www.newyorker.com. 2005.

  20 Copy quote

• When I desire you a part of me is gone.

  Anne Carson

  Desire, Gone

  Anne Carson (2014). “Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay”, p.30, Princeton University Press

  21 Copy quote

• Under the seams runs the pain.

  Anne Carson

  Running, Pain

  Anne Carson (1998). “Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse”, Knopf

  22 Copy quote

• Sometimes I dream a sentence and write it down. It’s usually nonsense, but sometimes it seems a key to another world.

  Anne Carson

  Dream, Writing, Keys

  12 Copy quote

• A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.

  Anne Carson

  Time, Moving, Mean

  Anne Carson (1999). “Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse”, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

Page 1 of 5

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin