"Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do."
"I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure."
8 likes
Source: Anne Carson (2009). “The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos”, p.35, Vintage
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Anne Carson
"As Sokrates tells it, your story begins the moment Eros enters you. That incursion is the biggest risk of your life. How you handle it is an index of the quality, wisdom, and decorum of the things inside you. As you handle it you come into contact with what is inside you, in a sudden and startling way. You perceive what you are, what you lack, what you could be."
"One of the principle qualities of pain is that it demands an explanation."
"To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope."
"The words we read and words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbola never perfectly match. Eros is in between."
"You remember too much," my mother said to me recently. "Why hold onto all that?" And I said, "where can I put it down?"