Anne Carson Quotes & Sayings

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

I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp
brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure. — Anne Carson

No I mean everything everyone saw everyone saw because I saw it — Anne Carson

The moon makes a traveler hunger for something bitter in the world, what is it? I will vanish; others will come here, what is that? An old question. — Anne Carson

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

And the reason he cannot bear her dying is not the loss of her (which is the future) but that dying puts the two of them (now) into this nakedness together that is unforgivable. — Anne Carson

And tonight - Geryon? You okay?
Yes fine, I'm listening. Tonight - ?
Why do you have your jacket over your head?
...
Can't hear you Geryon. The jacket shifted. Geryon peered out. I said sometimes
I need a little privacy. — Anne Carson

There is something about the way that Greek poets, say Aeschylus, use metaphor that really attracts me. I don't think I can imitate it, but there's a density to it that I think I'm always trying to push towards in English. — Anne Carson

My mother forbad us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them. — Anne Carson

She said,
When you see these horrible images why do you stay with them?
Why keep watching? Why not go away? I was amazed.
Go away where? I said. — Anne Carson

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

Her marble tears run down her marble face.
A stranger is someone who has no handkerchief.

Who has no words to say.

Whose shadow mind is burning
as he sits watching her hands
and thinks how rare!

to see a Roman
talk
with no gestures at all. — Anne Carson

People really understand very little of one another. Sometimes when I speak to him, my Cid looks very hard and straight into my face as if in search of something (a city on a map?) like someone who has tumbled off a star. But he's not the one who feels alien - ever, I think. He lives in a small country of hope, which is his heart. Like Sokrates he fails to understand why travel should be such a challenge to the muscles of the heart, for other people. Around every bend of the road is a city of gold, isn't it?
I am the kind of person who thinks no, probably not. And we walk, side by side, in different countries. — 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

When I began to be published, people got the idea that I should 'teach writing,' which I have no idea how to do and don't really believe in. — Anne Carson

Meanwhile music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song. — Anne Carson

Up against another human being one's own procedures take on definition. — Anne Carson

It is perilous to live past the end of your myth — Anne Carson

I never had much education in English poetry as such. — Anne Carson

Pilgrims were people in scientific exile. — Anne Carson

Like the terrestrial crust of the earth / which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul / is a miracle of mutual pressures. — Anne Carson

Desire is no light thing. — Anne Carson

I don't know that we really think any thoughts; we think connections between thoughts. That's where the mind moves, that's what's new, and the thoughts themselves have probably been there in my head or lots of other people's heads for a long time. — Anne Carson

It is when you are asking about something that you realize you yourself have survived it, and so you must carry it, or fashion it into a thing that carries itself, — Anne Carson

Let's do something cheerful
all your designs are about captivity, it depresses me.
Geryon watched the top of Herakles' head
and felt his limits returning. Nothing to say. He looked at this fact
in mild surprise. Once in childhood
his ice cream had been eaten by a dog. Just an empty con
in a small dramatic red fist.
Herakles stood up. No? Let's go then. On the way home they tried "Joy To The World"
but were too tired. It seemed a long drive. — Anne Carson

Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate ... — Anne Carson

Madness and witchery as well as bestiality are conditions commonly associated with the use of the female voice in public. — Anne Carson

You can get used to eating breakfast with a man in a fedora. You can get used to anything, my mother was in the habit of saying. — Anne Carson

He was trying to fit this Herakles onto the one he knew. — Anne Carson

Blessed be they whose lives do not taste of evil
but if some god shakes your house
ruin arrives
ruin does not leave
it comes tolling over the generations
it comes rolling the black night salt up from the ocean floor
and all your thrashed coasts groan — Anne Carson

Ascent of the rapist up the stairs seems as slow as lava. She listens to the black space where his consciousness is, moving towards her. — Anne Carson

That night we made love "the real way" which we had not yet attempted
although married six months.
Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day I'm not sure
we got it right.
He seemed happy. You're like Venice he said beautifully.
Early next day
I wrote a short talk ("On Defloration") which he stole and had published
in a small quarterly magazine.
Overall this was a characteristic interaction between us.
Or should I say ideal.
Neither of us had ever seen Venice. — Anne Carson

When they made love
Geryon liked to touch in slow succession each of the bones of Herakles' back
as it arched away from him into who knows what dark dream of its own, running both hands all the way down
from the base of the neck
to the end of the spine which he can cause to shiver like a root in the rain. — Anne Carson

He stood against the wind and let it peel him
clean — Anne Carson

I loved him for his beauty.
As I would again if he came near.
Beauty convinces. — Anne Carson

Pilgrims were people glad to take off their clothing, which was on fire. — Anne Carson

It was not fear of ridicule,
to which everyday life as a winged red person had accommodated Geryon early in life,
but this blank desertion of his own mind
that threw him into despair. — Anne Carson

Facts are bigger in the dark. — Anne Carson

Here we go mother on the shipless ocean.
Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go. — Anne Carson

You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that?
And I said,
Where do I put it down? — 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. — Anne Carson

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

In later years this
is the one memory he
wishes would go away and
not come back. And the
reason he cannot bear her
dying is not the loss of her
(which is the future) but
that dying puts the two of
them (now) into this
nakedness together that is
unforgiveable. They do not
forgive it. He turns away.
This roaring air in his
arms. She is released. — Anne Carson

Consider incompleteness as a verb. — Anne Carson

... ..in that blurred state between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul. Like the terrestial crust of the earth which is proportionately 10 times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul is a miracle of mutual pressures. Millions of kilograms of force pounding up from earth's core on the inside to meet the cold air of the world and stop as we do, just in time. — Anne Carson

Not touching but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh. — Anne Carson

You could take the entirety of the common sense of humans and put it in the palm of your hand and still have room for your dick. — Anne Carson

I mean, every thought starts over, so every expression of a thought has to do the same. every accuracy has to be invented ... I feel I am blundering in concepts too fine for me. — Anne Carson

Campaign Against Akhmatova Begins (1922)

She ran from lamppost to lamppost, the wind slammed.
Trotsky reviewed her in Pravda: One reads with dismay...
and an unofficial Communist Party resolution banned her poetry (1925).
She didn't notice, didn't know what a Communist Party was in those days.
Fog choked the city.
Russia's great poets were all about 35 years ol
Scraggly trees wandered by the canal in dim sun. — Anne Carson

Although a monster Geryon could be charming in company. — Anne Carson

Life pulls softly inside your bindings. The pod glows - dear stench. — Anne Carson

We live by waters breaking out of the heart. — Anne Carson

You read a hundred
military manuals you won't
find the word kill they trick
you into killing. — 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

Are there many little boys who think they are a
Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the
Dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded him
Joyfully — Anne Carson

One of the principle qualities of pain is that it demands an explanation. — Anne Carson

She stumbled then and Geryon caught her other arm, it was like a handful of autumn. He felt huge and wrong. When is it polite to let go someone's arm after you grab it? — 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

Existence will not stop until it gets to beauty. — Anne Carson

He / thought of women. / What is it like to be a woman / listening in the dark? Black mantle of silence / stretches between them like geothermal pressure. / Ascent of the rapist up the stairs seems as slow as / lava. She listens / to the blank space where / his consciousness is, moving towards her. Lava can / move as slow as / nine hours per inch. [ ... ] She wonders if / he is listening too. The cruel thing is, she falls asleep / listening. — Anne Carson

Time as hunger.
Time passing and gazing.
Time as perseverance.
Mountain time.
Time as paper folded to look like a mountain.
Time compared to the wild fantastic silence of stars. — Anne Carson

They were two superior eels
at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics. — Anne Carson

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 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

There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you - may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn't that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life. Within it you watch [yourself] act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours. — Anne Carson

Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary. — Anne Carson

Give me a world, you have taken the world I was. — Anne Carson

Small, red, and upright he waited,
gripping his new bookbag tight
in one hand and touching a lucky penny inside his coat pocket with the other,
while the first snows of winter
floated down on his eyelashes and covered the branches around him and silenced
all trace of the world. — Anne Carson

There is something maddeningly attractive about the untranslatable, about a word that goes silent in transit. — Anne Carson

We participate in the creation of the world by decreating ourselves. — Anne Carson

DEATH
...
And now you are here to fight for this woman.
You know her promise is given.
She has to die or her husband won't go free.
APOLLO
Relax, I'm not breaking any laws.
DEATH
Why the bow, if you're breaking no laws?
APOLLO
I always carry a bow, it's my trademark. — Anne Carson

Caught between the tongue and the taste. — Anne Carson

I don't want to be a person.
I want to be unbearable. — Anne Carson

Well, they said, these are the pies we have. It was a proverb. — Anne Carson

When I desire you a part of me is gone... — Anne Carson

I shall not walk your ways again. — Anne Carson

XXIV. And kneeling at the edge of the transparent sea I shall shape for myself a new heart from salt and mud — Anne Carson

God's pity! How long will it feel like burning? — Anne Carson

I do think that something of the effect I have on people is to put everything on an edge where they're both infatuated with a kind of charmingness happening in the person or in the writing, and also flatly terrified by a revelation or acceptance of revelation that's almost happening, never quite totally happening. — Anne Carson

To feel anything
deranges you. To be seen
feeling anything strips you
naked. In the grip of it
pleasure or pain doesn't
matter. You think what
will they do what new
power will they acquire if
they see me naked like
this. If they see you
feeling. You have no idea
what. It's not about them.
To be seen is the penalty. — Anne Carson

No one will ever make necessity not happen. — Anne Carson

Gorge after gorge, turning, turning. Caverns of sunset, falling, falling away - just a single vast gold air breathed out by beings - they must have been marvelous beings, those gold-breathers. Down. Purple-and-green islands. Cleft and groined and gigantically pocked like something left behind after all the oceans vanished one huge night: the mountains. Their hills fold and fold again, fold away, down. Folded into the dens and rocks of the hills are ghost towns. Broken streets end in them, like a sound, nowhere. Shadow is inside. We walk (oh quietly) even so - breaking lines of force, someone's. Houses stand in their stones. Each house an empty socket. Some streaked with red inside. Words once went on in there - no. I don't believe that. Words never went on in there. — Anne Carson

My religion makes no sense
and does not help me
therefore I pursue it. — Anne Carson

There are different gradations of personhood in different poems. Some of them seem far away from me and some up close, and the up-close ones generally don't say what I want them to say. And that's true of the persona in the poem who's lamenting this as a fact of a certain stage of life. But it's also true of me as me. — Anne Carson

He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet. — Anne Carson

Humans in love are terrible. You see them come hungering at one another like prehistoric wolves, you see something struggling for life in between them like a root or a soul and it flares for a moment, then they smash it. The difference between them smashes the bones out. So delicate the bones. — Anne Carson

Kinds of water drown us. Kinds of water do not. — Anne Carson

Some conversations are not about what they're about. — Anne Carson

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

Time isn't made of anything. It is an abstraction. Just a meaning that we impose upon motion. — Anne Carson

CHORUS: Helen! wild mad Helen
you murdered so many beneath Troy.
Now you've crowned yourself one final perfect time,
a crown of blood that will not wash away.
Strife walks with you everywhere you go.
KLYTAIMESTRA: Oh, stop whining.
And why get angry at Helen?
As if she singlehandedly destroyed those multitudes of men.
As if she all alone made this wound in us — Anne Carson

M: ... but everytime I start in everytime I everytime you see I would have to tell the whole story all over again or else lie so I lie I just lie who are they who are the storytellers who can put an end to stories — 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

Love is a good place to situate our distrust of fake women. — Anne Carson

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

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

On the Rules of Perspective
A bad trick. Mistake. Dishonesty. These are the views of Braque. Why? Braque rejected perspective. Why? Someone who spends his life drawing profiles will end up believing that man has one eye, Braque felt. Braque wanted to take full possession of objects. He said as much in published interviews. Watching the small shiny planes of the landscape recede out of his grasp filled Braque with loss so he smashed them. Nature morte, said Braque. — Anne Carson

[Short Talk on the Sensation of Airplane Takeoff] Well you know I wonder, it could be love running toward my life with its arms up yelling let's buy it what a bargain! — Anne Carson

Like honey is the sleep of the just. — Anne Carson

I am talking about evil.
It blooms.
It eats.
It grins. — Anne Carson