Angela Carter Quotes

Quotes about:

Age Books Children Country Desire Eyes Fathers

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

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What a joy it is to dance and sing!

Angela Carter

Dance, Joy

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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

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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

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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

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

Angela Carter

World, Fool, Illusion

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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

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

Angela Carter

Book, Reading, Writing

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A mother is always a mother, since a mother is a biological fact, whilst a father is a movable feast.

Angela Carter

Mother, Father, Facts

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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

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

Angela Carter

Sky, Eternity, Lost

"The Magic Toyshop".

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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.

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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

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Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.

Angela Carter

Life, Art, Mean

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Love is desire sustained by unfulfilment.

Angela Carter

Love Is, Desire

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

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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

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His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.

Angela Carter

Two, Rubies, Chokers

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

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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

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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

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Soon, nostalgia will be another name for Europe.

Angela Carter

Europe, Names, Nostalgia

Angela Carter (1993). “Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings”, Vintage Books

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To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with.

Angela Carter

Literature, Pins, Hypothesis

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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

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If the Barbarians are destroyed, who will we then be able to blame for the bad things?

Angela Carter

Able, Barbarians, Blame

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What would the daughters of the rich do with themselves if the poor ceased to exist?

Angela Carter

Daughter, Philanthropy, Rich

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

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It's every woman's tragedy, that, after a certain age, she looks like a female impersonator. Mind you, we've known some lovely female impersonators, in our time.

Angela Carter

Lovely, Mind, Tragedy

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

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