Anne Carson Quotes

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. Hence the notion found early in ancient thought that all poets are liars. And from the true lies of poetry trickled out a question. What really connects words and things?

My secrets must be poetic to be believable.

What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality.

I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.

A myth is far truer than a history, for a history only gives a story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of the substances that cast the shadows.

The story of Little Blue Riding Hood is true. Only the color has been changed to prevent an investigation.

All my plays have these titles that are oddly tricky. I like that something can look like one thing but mean two different things. Language is really unstable in that way.

I love having those lyrics that at first make you think it's about one thing, but it's really about something so much more.

I am so used to hints and mixed messages, saying things that might mean what they sort of sound like they mean. Games and contests, roles and rituals, talking in twelve languages at once so the true words won't be so obvious. I am not used to a plainspoken, honest truth.

Some truths are expressed best in the form of myth.

The truth of a myth...is not in its words but its patterns.

The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact

Fantasy is probably the oldest literary device for talking about reality.

Death and resurrection are what the story is about and had we but eyes to see it, this has been hinted on every page, met us, in some disguise, at every turn, and even been muttered in conversations between such minor characters (if they are minor characters) as the vegetables.

Darkness as well as light. Or do I mean darkness, another kind of light? Lucifer would say so, and I have a weakness for fallen angels.

A tale in everything.

Art as a whole is a riddle. Another way of putting this is to say that art expresses something while at the same time hiding it.

One should never mistake pattern for meaning.

Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, you know, which you can find if you look.

Fairytales were maps formed of blood and hair and bones; they were the knots of the sub-conscious unwound. Every word in every tale was real and as true as apples and stones. They all led to the story inside the story.

I'm beginning to think cookies is a code word for something else." "Maybe it is." He tugged on my bag again as he took a confident step back, forcing me down another step. "And just think about it. If cookie was a code word, whatever it symbolizes, it's been in your mouth, sweetheart.

[But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.

A myth is a lie that conveys a truth.

The test of a true myth is that each time you return to it, new insights and interpretations arise.

The less manifest the work, the stronger: as though a secret law demanded it always be hidden in what it shows, thus showing what must remain hidden, only showing it, in the end, by dissimulation.