"Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do."
"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."
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Source: Anne Carson (2015). “Plainwater: Essays and Poetry”, p.224, Vintage
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"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."
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"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?"