Anne Carson Writing Quotations

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.

Sometimes I dream a sentence and write it down. It’s usually nonsense, but sometimes it seems a key to another world.

If your way of life is writing, then everything that happens becomes a sentence.

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.

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.

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.

Each night about this time he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing.