The notion of a universality of human experience is a confidence trick and the notion of a universality of female experience is a clever confidence trick. Angela Carter More Quotes by Angela Carter More Quotes From Angela Carter A fairy tale is the kind of story in which one king goes to another king to borrow a cup of sugar Angela Carter sugar kings stories My mother learned that she was carrying me at about the same time the Second World War was declared; with the family talent for magic realism, she once told me she had been to the doctor's on the very day. Angela Carter magic-realism mother war He is, I think, already pondering a magisterial project: that of buggering the English language, the ultimate revenge of the colonialised. Angela Carter language revenge thinking Strangers used to gather together at the cinema and sit together in the dark, like Ancient Greeks participating in the mysteries, dreaming the same dream in unison. Angela Carter greek dark dream We do not go to bed in single pairs; even if we choose not to refer to them, we still drag there with us the cultural impedimenta of our social class, our parents' lives, our bank balances, our sexual and emotional expectations, our whole biographies-all the bits and pieces of our unique existences. Angela Carter emotional unique life A young girl would go into the wood as trustingly as Red Riding Hood to her granny's house but this light admits no ambiguities and, here, she will be trapped in her own illusion because everything in the woods is exactly as it seems. Angela Carter girl light house Mother is in herself a concrete denial of the idea of sexual pleasure since her sexuality has been placed at the service of reproductive function alone. She is the perpetually violated passive principle; her autonomy has been sufficiently eroded by the presence within her of the embryo she brought to term. Her unthinking ability to reproduce, which is her pride, is, since it is beyond choice, not a specific virtue of her own. Angela Carter pride mother ideas My paternal grandmother would not light a fire on the Sabbath and piled all Sunday's washing-up in a bucket, to be dealt with on Monday morning, because the Sabbath was a day of rest--a practice that made my paternal grandfather, the village atheist, as mad as fire. Nevertheless, he willed five quid to the minister, just to be on the safe side. Angela Carter atheist monday morning Hollywood... was the place where the United States perpetrated itself as a universal dream and put the dream into mass production. Angela Carter united-states hollywood dream I drew the curtains to conceal the sight of my father's farewell; my spite was sharp as broken glass. Angela Carter glasses farewell father Midnight, and the clock strikes. It is Christmas Day, the werewolves birthday, the door of the solstice still wide enough open to let them all slink through. Angela Carter christmas midnight doors Your green eye is a reducing chamber. If I look into it long enough, I wil become as small as my own reflection, I will diminish to a point and vanish. I will be drawn down into that black whirlpool and be consumed by you. I shall become so small you can keep me in one of your osier cages and mock my loss of liberty. Angela Carter eye reflection loss Hope for the best, expect the worst. Angela Carter hoping-for-the-best worst Some cities are women and must be loved; others are men and can only be admired or bargained with Angela Carter cities men Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people. Angela Carter humor funny people Nothing is a matter of life and death except life and death. Angela Carter life-and-death literature matter He is the intermediary between us, his audience, the living, and they, the dolls, the undead, who cannot live at all and yet who mimic the living in every detail since, though they cannot speak or weep, still they project those signals of signification we instantly recognize as language. Angela Carter details dolls language He was a lovely man in many ways. But he kept on insisting on forgiving me when there was nothing to forgive. Angela Carter lovely forgiving men Our fingernails match our toenails, match our lipstick match our rouge...The habit of applying warpaint outlasts the battle. Angela Carter toenails habit battle For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world. Angela Carter our-world imagination men
