Anne Carson Quotes

Metaphor is not just the detection of patterns; it is the creation of patterns.

Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions.

Man can no more think without words than see without light.

By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.

The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.

The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.

Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate and learn, discover and invent.

A man without words is a man without thought.

During the '70s I was interested in words and meaning as a way of making art.

Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.

Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.

A thought is an idea in transit.

Language is memory and metaphor.

Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious.

Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech.

Don't say 'the White House wants.' Buildings can't want.

Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.

There is no aspect of our experience not molded in some way by metaphor's almost imperceptible touch.

Man does not speak because he thinks; he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.

Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.

We think in language. We think in words. Language is the landscape of thought.

The senses collect the surface facts of matter... It was sensation; when memory came, it was experience; when mind acted, it was knowledge; when mind acted on it as knowledge, it was thought.

Real thinking is possible only in the light of genuine language, no matter how limited, how primitive.

Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.