I don't really think that writers, even great writers, are prophets, or sages, or Messiah-like figures; writing is a lonely, sedentary occupation and a touch of megalomania can be comforting around five on a November afternoon when you haven't seen anybody all day.

Angela Carter

Categorized in : Thinking Writing Lonely

Nostalgia, the vice of the aged. We watch so many old movies our... by Angela Carter

Nostalgia, the vice of the aged. We watch so many old movies our memories come in monochrome.

vices memories watches

Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instru... by Angela Carter

Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.

language-and-power instruments culture

A book is simply the container of an idea-like a bottle; what is... by Angela Carter

A book is simply the container of an idea-like a bottle; what is inside the book is what matters.

what-matters writing book

Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a... by Angela Carter

Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.

new-york men sex

A day without an argument is like an egg without salt. by Angela Carter

A day without an argument is like an egg without salt.

salt eggs literature

Moonlight, white satin, roses. A bride. by Angela Carter

Moonlight, white satin, roses. A bride.

moonlight white rose

I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates.

angel culture thinking

What a joy it is to dance and sing! by Angela Carter

What a joy it is to dance and sing!

dance joy

She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. from "The Lady of the Haunted House

eye house doe

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

reading writing book

Soon, nostalgia will be another name for Europe. by Angela Carter

Soon, nostalgia will be another name for Europe.

nostalgia names europe

Drosselmeier had unwittingly exposed himself to an overdose of reality, and it had destroyed his reason.

surrealism reason reality

The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown. by Angela Carter

The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown.

laughter laughing children

The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he's as cunning as he is ferocious; once he's had a taste of flesh then nothing else will do.

carnivores taste flesh

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. by Angela Carter

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself.

reading writing book

To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with.

hypothesis pins literature

It shone on everyone, whether they had a contract or not. The most democratic thing I'd ever seen, that California sunshine.

sunshine contracts california

In a world where women are commodities, a woman who refuses to sell herself will have the thing she refuses to sell taken away from her by force

commodity taken world

Anticipation is the greater part of pleasure. by Angela Carter

Anticipation is the greater part of pleasure.

pleasure greater anticipation

Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place.

god mother life