Anne Carson Quotes

When you come from so many damaged places you don't ever want to spiral back there, so you gotta continue to check yourself.

All of us heal in time. The strongest are born again. We only keep the scars we choose to keep.

Life's fairly excruciating. Painful things happen. Every now and then, you drag yourself out of the stream and stand on the bank gasping for air. I think that's how I work.

Deliverance is about what I went through the first time. And I chalk it up as a learning experience.

By the time you're 30, you know who you are inside. You learn to laugh at things you can't change; you learn to be yourself.

I look back at myself, this innocent person, and I think, 'Gosh, she's okay.' I handled a lot, and I'm still here.

I learned patience, perseverance, and dedication. Now I really know myself, and I know my voice. It's a voice of pain and victory.

Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.

Turn your wounds into wisdom.

I feel like I am a better person because of my struggles, because of my challenges and persevering through them and realizing the mistakes that I've made, correcting them.

Paule Marshall does not let the black women in her fiction lose. While they lose friends, lovers, husbands, homes, or jobs, they always find themselves.

I can laugh at my own grief.

I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.

I sit here drunk now. I am a series of small victories and large defeats and I am as amazed as any other that I have gotten from there to here without committing murder or being murdered; without having ended up in the madhouse. as I drink alone again tonight my soul despite all the past agony thanks all the gods who were not there for me then.

Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of dark corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.

I definitely learned a lesson this time. I know that I can be broken. I am not as tough as I thought. I see it now. At this point, it's the only thing good that came out of all of this. I know myself better now and know what I have to do.

Nothing changes what alreaday happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't.

I don't think you learn as much about yourself when you are moving forwards as when you have fallen backwards. That's when you really learn who you are. And reach for the things that have propelled you forward and made you a better person.

Scars remind me of just how far that I've come.

It is impressive to see a person who has been battered by life in many ways, who is torn by a variety of unsolved problems, who may be alienated from many aspects of the self-but who is still fighting, still struggling, still striving to find the path to a fulfilling existence, moved by the wisdom of knowing, "I am more than my problems."

But...as bad as it was, I learned something about myself. That I could go through something like that and survive. I mean, I know it could have been worse--a lot worse-- but for me, it was all I could have handled at the time. And I learned from it.

No matter how painful your past has been, you have made it through.

To heal our wounds, we need courage to face them.

Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work-- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside-- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within-that you don't feel until it's too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again.

There comes a time when the bubble of ego is popped and you can’t get the ground back for an extended period of time. Those times, when you absolutely cannot get it back together, are the most rich and powerful times in our lives.