Anne Carson Quotes

Now every mortal has pain
and sweat is constant,
but if there is anything dearer than being alive,
it's dark to me.
We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing
(whatever it is) that glitters on the earth — we call it life. We know no other.
The underworld's a blank
and all the rest just fantasy.

I suppose you do love me, in your way,” I said to him one night close to dawn when we lay on the narrow bed. “And how else should I love you — in your way?” he asked. I am still thinking about that.

Beauty makes me hopeless. I don't care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead-calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.

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.

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.

Caught between the tongue and the taste.

You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that?

And I said,
Where do I put it down?

To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.

Perhaps the hardest thing about losing a lover is
to watch the year repeat its days.

...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.

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

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.

I don't want to be a person.
I want to be unbearable.

The man has a theory. The woman has hipbones. Here comes Death.

...I am talking about evil.

It blooms.
It eats.
It grins.