Anne Carson Quotes

A word is no light matter. Words have with truth been called fossil poetry, each, that is, a symbol of a creative thought.

All myth is an enriched pattern, a two-faced proposition, allowing its operator to say one thing and mean another, to lead a double life.

Liars are experts in chopping logic and missing the truth slightly - 'Did God say not to eat from any tree?' In order to pin a liar down, words must be defined in the most careful manner available.

Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.

There is at least one truth to every myth, and it takes one truth to create a lie. Lies can be formed from Truth; however, Truth cannot be formed from lies.

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.

We must take our sentences seriously, which means we must understand them philosophically, and the odd thing is that the few who do, who take them with utter sober seriousness, the utter sober seriousness of right-wing parsons and political saviors, the owners of Pomeranians, are the liars who want to be believed, the novelists and poets, who know that the creatures they imagine have no other being than the sounding syllables which the reader will speak into his own weary and distracted head. There are no magic words. To say the words is magical enough.

Truth speaks best in the language of poetry and symbolism, I think.

Poets themselves, tho' liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions.

A myth is a lie that conveys a truth.

You've learned that every good lie is threaded with truth and every accepted truth leaks lies.

Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.

Behind every myth lies a truth; beyond every legend is reality, as radiant (sometimes as chilling) as the story itself.

All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

The function of poetry is to point out that the sign is not identical to the referent.

Everyone seems to be running against a liar, but nobody seems to be one. Odd - I mean, the math doesn't work out.

Whenever a man talks he lies, and so far as he talks to himself - that is to say, so far as he thinks, knowing that he thinks - he lies to himself. The only truth in human life is that which is physiological. Speech - this thing that they call a social product - was made for lying.

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality. For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie-deliberate, contrived and dishonest-but the myth-persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Mythology distracts us everywhere.

Language is the instrument in all cases and can language be trusted?If it were not for language, could we lie?

A liar is a man who does now know how to deceive, a flatterer one who only deceives fools: he who knows how to make skilful use of the truth, and understands its eloquence, can alone pride himself in cleverness.

Faces can lie. Backsides can't.