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

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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
Form
Arise
Self
Forms
Behinds
Behind
Leave
Effort
Arises
Desire
Edge
Science
Edges

More quotes by Anne Carson

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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.
Anne Carson
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To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.
Anne Carson
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Life pulls softly inside your bindings. The pod glows - dear stench.
Anne Carson
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Maybe I could have been good as a drawer if I had done it as much as I did writing, but it's more scary to draw. It's more revealing. You can't disguise yourself in drawing.
Anne Carson
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Aristotle says that metaphor causes the mind to experience itself in the act of making a mistake.
Anne Carson
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I don't read reviews and I don't know what to do with opinions, so I just lose them. They take up space, they become a process of manufacturing a persona, which I want to avoid.
Anne Carson
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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.
Anne Carson
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Meanwhile music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song.
Anne Carson
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Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.
Anne Carson
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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
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No one will ever make necessity not happen.
Anne Carson
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Lava bread makes you passionate.
Anne Carson
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Up against another human being one's own procedures take on definition
Anne Carson
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A page with a poem on it is less attractive than a page with a poem on it and some tea stains.
Anne Carson
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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
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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. Hence the notion found early in ancient thought that all poets are liars. And from the true lies of poetry trickled out a question. What really connects words and things?
Anne Carson
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A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.
Anne Carson
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Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.
Anne Carson
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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.
Anne Carson
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You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God with the good sense to doubt me. What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us? For an instant God suspends assent and poof! we disappear.
Anne Carson