Angela Carter Quotes

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Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.

Angela Carter

Culture, Language And Power, Instruments

Angela Carter (1998). “Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings”, Penguin Group USA

27 Copy quote
Nostalgia, the vice of the aged. We watch so many old movies our memories come in monochrome.

Angela Carter

Memories, Vices, Watches

Angela Carter (2012). “Wise Children”, p.10, Random House

69 Copy quote
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.

Angela Carter

Book, Reading, Writing

31 Copy quote
Is not this world an illusion? And yet it fools everybody.

Angela Carter

World, Fool, Illusion

21 Copy quote
What a joy it is to dance and sing!

Angela Carter

Dance, Joy

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

Angela Carter

Acts Of Love, Chamber, Resemblance

Angela Carter (1997). “Burning your boats: the collected short stories”, Penguin Group USA

10 Copy quote
I am entirely alone. I and my shadow fill the universe.

Angela Carter

Shadow, Universe

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

Angela Carter

Past, House, Different

5 Copy quote
Nostalgia, the vice of the aged.

Angela Carter

Vices, Nostalgia

11 Copy quote
Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place.

Angela Carter

Life, God, Mother

Angela Carter (2015). “The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History”, p.7, Hachette UK

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

Angela Carter

Sex, New York, Men

Angela Carter (1997). “Shaking a Leg: Journalism and Writings”, Vintage

25 Copy quote
In a world where women are commodities, a woman who refuses to sell herself will have the thing she refuses to sell taken away from her by force

Angela Carter

Taken, World, Commodity

Angela Carter (2015). “The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History”, p.32, Hachette UK

6 Copy quote
A book is simply the container of an idea-like a bottle; what is inside the book is what matters.

Angela Carter

Book, Writing, What Matters

Angela Carter (1997). “Shaking a Leg: Journalism and Writings”, Vintage

18 Copy quote
A day without an argument is like an egg without salt.

Angela Carter

Eggs, Literature, Salt

Angela Carter (1997). “Shaking a Leg: Journalism and Writings”, Vintage

24 Copy quote
We must all make do with the rags of love we find flapping on the scarecrow of humanity.

Angela Carter

Humanity, Rags, Scarecrow

Angela Carter (1984). “Nights at the circus”, Vintage

27 Copy quote
Moonlight, white satin, roses. A bride.

Angela Carter

White, Rose, Moonlight

19 Copy quote
A young girl would go into the wood as trustingly as Red Riding Hood to her granny's house but this light admits no ambiguities and, here, she will be trapped in her own illusion because everything in the woods is exactly as it seems.

Angela Carter

Girl, Light, House

Angela Carter (1997). “Burning your boats: the collected short stories”, Penguin Group USA

4 Copy quote
Anticipation is the greater part of pleasure.

Angela Carter

Anticipation, Pleasure, Greater

Angela Carter (1997). “Burning your boats: the collected short stories”, Penguin Group USA

5 Copy quote
For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.

Angela Carter

Men, Our World, Imagination

Angela Carter (2015). “Angela Carter's Book Of Fairy Tales”, p.10, Hachette UK

11 Copy quote
She stood lost in eternity wearing a crazy dress, watching the immense sky.

Angela Carter

Sky, Eternity, Lost

"The Magic Toyshop".

17 Copy quote
I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates.

Angela Carter

Angel, Thinking, Culture

"The Company of Angela Carter". "Marxism Today" Magazine, January 1985.

62 Copy quote
Home is where the heart is and hence a movable feast.

Angela Carter

Home, Heart, Home Is Where The Heart Is

Angela Carter (1998). “Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings”, Penguin Group USA

6 Copy quote
Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself.

Angela Carter

Book, Reading, Writing

9 Copy quote
I don't really think that writers, even great writers, are prophets, or sages, or Messiah-like figures; writing is a lonely, sedentary occupation and a touch of megalomania can be comforting around five on a November afternoon when you haven't seen anybody all day.

Angela Carter

Lonely, Writing, Thinking

Angela Carter (1997). “Shaking a Leg: Journalism and Writings”, Vintage

17 Copy quote
His touch both consoles and devastates me; I feel my heart pulse, then wither, naked as a stone on the roaring mattress while the lovely, moony night slides through the window to dapple the flanks of this innocent who makes cages to keep the sweet birds in. Eat me, drink me; thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden, I go back and back to him to have his fingers strip the tattered skin away and clothe me in his dress of water, this garment that drenches me, its slithering odour, its capacity for drowning.

Angela Carter

Sweet, Heart, Night

16 Copy quote

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Born: May 7, 1940
Died: February 16, 1992
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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