Quotes from Anne Carson

But when justice is done the world drops away.

It is a black-and-white photograph showing a naked young man in fetal position. He has entitled it "No Tail!" The fantastic fingerwork of his wings is outspread on the bed like a black lace map of South America.

chorus should we discuss your philanthropy prometheus I went a bit too far chorus how do you mean prometheus I stopped them seeing death before them chorus who prometheus human beings chorus how prometheus I planted blind hope in their hearts chorus why prometheus they were breaking chorus you fool

Oral cultures and literate cultures do not think, perceive or fall in

What is a Lamb of God? People use this phrase. I don't know. I watch my sister, fingers straying absently about her mustache, no help there.

nothing vast enters the lives of mortals without ruin

Order streamed from Noah in blue triangles and as the pure fury of his classifications rose around him, engulfing his life, they came to be called waves by others, who drowned, a world of them.

Isaiah go home and get some sleep, said God. Isaiah went home, slept, woke again. Isaiah felt a sensation below the neck, it was a silk and bitter sensation. Isaiah looked down. It was milk forcing the nipples open. Isaiah was more than whole. I am not with you am in you, said the muffled white voice of God.

when joy betrays you I do not count your life alive a corpse is more alive be as rich as you like be absolute if your joy goes I wouldn't buy you for a shadow of smoke

Kinds of water drown us. Kinds of water do not.

I: Dreams give us more than we ask M: I'm not talking about dreams no one's dreams are of any use to anyone else I: Why M: They are merely experiments an experimental surface I: But surely that involves at least let's say an organizing effort M: Nothing takes place but the place I: Are you serious M: Just a telephone ringing in an empty house I: Why not answer it

XII. WINGS Steps off a scraped March sky and sinks Up into the blind Atlantic morning One small Red dog jumping across the beach miles below Like a freed shadow

Geryon watched the top of Herakles' head and felt his limits returning. Nothing to say. Nothing.

A translator is someone trying to get in between a body and its shadow.

The fact that Anna is somewhere having coffee or a dream is an assault on me. I hate these moments of poverty, What does man eat? ask the phenomenologists. Likes the dogs, names, down there, starving.

It is very cold walking into the long scraped April wind. At this time of the year there is no sunset just some movements inside the light and then as sinking away.

What's here doesn't please you, what's far off you crave. Anne Carson, from Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides

I shall not walk your ways again.

As tree shapes from mist / Her young death / Loose / In you.

In Renaissance painting every point in space is accounted for. Here is a point, Anna, discoursing with the phenomenologist from Wiesbaden and raising her eyes to heaven. Standing just outside their line of vision, I slide my eye to the left. Postmetaphysical myself, I will be unaccountable for the murder.

In Geryon's autobiography this page has a photograph of some red rabbit giggle tied with a white ribbon. He has titled it "Jealous of My Little Sensations.

I've come to understand the best one can hope for as a human is to have a relationship with the space where God would be if God were available, but God isn't.

M: Fantasy just makes me hungrier.

no interaction with another person ever brought her a bolt of pure aliveness like entering the water on a still morning with the world empty in every direction to the sky.