Quotes from Angela Carter

I say he had a propensity for 'finding himself in the right place at the right time'; yet it was almost as if he himself were an objet trouvé, for, subjectively, himself he never found, since it was not his self which he sought.

It was an event of too massive arbitrariness for me to comprehend but, as the rain-washed light fell more and more wistfully on the gigantic tip of sandstone that killed my bearded lady, my reptilian friend, my shooting star and my blind philosopher, I became most deeply aware of mortality.

But the Countess herself is indifferent to her own weird authority. She believes that, by ignoring it, she can abnegate it. More than anything, she would like to be human; but she does not know if that is possible. The Tarot always shows the same configuration: always she turns up La Papesse, Le Mort, Le Tour Abolie, wisdom, death, dissolution.

Un orrore morale tale da pervadere visibilmente i lineamenti! Non si era mai visto nulla di simile. Eravamo piuttosto sorprese, e ci sentimmo persino scorrette, come se noi vivessimo in un crepuscolo etico, in un pidocchioso mondo di compromessi, menzogne, giochi di prestigio applicati ai sentimenti. E così era, credo. La chiamavamo "Vita".

Sorridi in pubblico, piangi in pubblico, vivi in pubblico, crepa in pubblico. C'era, sui loro visi, un'emozione schietta, atipica per gli attori. Stasera erano al telegiornale. E' la cosa peggiore veder soffrire i propri figli.

La commedia è una tragedia che capita agli altri.

certo, una madre è sempre una madre, perché è un fatto biologico, mentre un padre è una festa mobile.

They rolled all over the pastel crayons scattered on the sheets so her back was variegated with patches and blotches all the colours of the rainbow and Lee was also marked everywhere with brilliant dusts, both here and there also darkly spotted with blood, each a canvas involuntarily patterned by those workings of random chance so much prized by the surrealists.

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.

I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.

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

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.

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

Those are the voices of my brothers, darling; I love the company of wolves.

The tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers.

I desire therefore I exist.

I think I want to be in love with you but I don't know how.

Anticipation is the greater part of pleasure.

There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer.

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.

There was a house we all had in common and it was called the past, even though we'd lived in different rooms.

Stars on our door, stars in our eyes, stars exploding in the bits of our brains where the common sense should have been

I am entirely alone. I and my shadow fill the universe.

Out of the frying pan into the fire! What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different!