381 Quotes by Angela Carter

The triumph of the will recreates, as its Utopia, the world of early childhood, and that is a world of nightmare, impotence and fear, in which the child fantasises, out of its own powerlessness, an absolute supremacy.

She said to the Daisy girl with her big brown eyes: ‘I will not have it plain. No. Fancy. It must be fancy!’ She meant her future. A moon-daisy dropped to the floor, down from her hair, like a faintly derisive sign from heaven.

The girl burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody’s meat.

Women’s sexy underwear is a minor but significant growth industry of late-twentieth-century Britain in the twilight of capitalism.

Sometimes he lays his head on my lap and lets me comb his lovely hair for him; his combings are leaves of every tree in the wood and dryly susurrate around my feet.

The kind of power mothers have is enormous. Take the skyline of Istanbul – enormous breasts, pathetic little willies, a final revenge on Islam. I was so scared I had to crouch in the bottom of the boat when I saw it.

I shall take two huge handfuls of his rustling hair as he lies half dreaming, half waking, and wind them into ropes, very softly, so he will not wake up, and, softly, with hands as gentle as rain, I shall strangle him with them.

I clung to him as though only the one who had inflicted the pain could comfort me for suffering it.

It doesn’t matter if what happens next spoils everything; the anticipation itself is always pure.