277 Quotes by Anne Carson

The beloved’s innocence brutalizes the lover. As the singing of a mad person behind you on the train enrages you, its beautiful animal-like teeth shining amid black planes of paint. As Helen enrages history. Senza uscita.

I am a drop of gold he would say I am molten matter returned from the core of earth to tell you interior things-.

I am kind of a curmudgeonly person, so I don’t gravitate to groups or traditions, which is probably just pretentious of me.

Your voice I know. It had me terrified. When I hear it in dreams, from time to time all my life, it sounds like a taunt – but dreams distort sound, for they send it over many waters. During these hard days, I, a pilgrim, am giving my consideration to this. I trudge along the bottom of the river and the questioning goes on in me. What are we made of but hunger and rage? His heels rise and fall in front of me. How surprised I am to be entangled in the knowledge of some other animal.

Oral cultures and literate cultures do not think, perceive or fall in.

Kinds of water drown us. Kinds of water do not.

It stung God. They say his spinal cord ran straight out of the sun.

Why does motion sadden him?

Note that the word ‘mute’ is regarded by linguists as an onomatopoeic formation referring not to silence but to a certain fundamental opacity of human being, which likes to show the truth by allowing to be seen hiding.