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

Anne Carson

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Anne Carson
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: June 21
Linguist
Literary Critic
Poet
Professor
Translator
Writer
City of Toronto
Carson
Anne
Energy
Axes
Human
Energies
Humans
Paradox
Love
Motive
Absence
Presence
Axis
Desire
Poised
Hate
Poles

More quotes by Anne Carson

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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.
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It is easier to tell a story of how people wound one another than of what binds them together.
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I was more worn out with the Odyssey than it was with the Iliad. I mean, just comparing those two - you can see how it's changing, how the language of the Iliad is somehow monstrously new - and that language of the Odyssey is more comfortable, even for us.
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Each night about this time he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing.
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We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing (whatever it is) that glitters on the earth-- we call it life.
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THE PRESOCRATIC PROBLEM [all snap flags] Parmenides named his gun The Hot Power of the Stars. His gun was one, uncreated, imperishable, timeless, changeless, perfect, spherical. Spherical was the problem.
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Sometimes I dream a sentence and write it down. It’s usually nonsense, but sometimes it seems a key to another world.
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A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.
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Philosophy - hopeless. Yet it gives me hope.
Anne Carson
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When I desire you a part of me is gone.
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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.
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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.
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he stood against the wind and let it peel him clean
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Time isn't made of anything. It is an abstraction. Just a meaning that we impose upon motion.
Anne Carson
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A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.
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Existence will not stop until it gets to beauty.
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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.
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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.
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M: Is he smart I: She yes very smart sees right through me M: In my day we valued blindness rather more
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The Greek language seems different than other languages. I'm not the only person to think this. Usually, I come up with some kind of dopey metaphor for why it's different. But it seems, somehow, more original, more like being in the morning of language.
Anne Carson