Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do. Anne Carson More Quotes by Anne Carson More Quotes From Anne Carson 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 greek morning thinking Homer must have felt this pressure to come up with an epic poem that would sound totally new to an audience that had loved his previous best-seller. Anne Carson epic pressure sound 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 odyssey two mean 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 drawing scary writing You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough. Anne Carson movement use mind We participate in the creation of the world by decreating ourselves. Anne Carson creation-of-the-world creation world The man has a theory. The woman has hipbones. Here comes Death. Anne Carson theory men No one will ever make necessity not happen. Anne Carson happens Consider incompleteness as a verb. Anne Carson incompleteness verbs he stood against the wind and let it peel him clean Anne Carson clean wind I never had much education in English poetry as such. Anne Carson english-poetry Up against another human being one's own procedures take on definition Anne Carson procedures definitions humans It is for God to fix the time who knows no time. Anne Carson knows 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 credit divine doubt Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love. Anne Carson being-in-love character reality Men know almost nothing about desire, they think it has to do with sexual activity or can be discharged that way. But sex is a substitute, like money or language. Sometimes I just want to stop seeing. Anne Carson men sex thinking When I began to be published, people got the idea that I should 'teach writing,' which I have no idea how to do and don't really believe in. Anne Carson writing believe ideas There are different gradations of personhood in different poems. Some of them seem far away from me and some up close, and the up-close ones generally don't say what I want them to say. And that's true of the persona in the poem who's lamenting this as a fact of a certain stage of life. But it's also true of me as me. Anne Carson different want facts I do think that something of the effect I have on people is to put everything on an edge where they're both infatuated with a kind of charmingness happening in the person or in the writing, and also flatly terrified by a revelation or acceptance of revelation that's almost happening, never quite totally happening. Anne Carson acceptance writing thinking Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate. Anne Carson light mind dark
