Quotes from Autobiography of Red

“Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“Under the seams runs the pain.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning 'placed on top', 'added', 'appended', 'foreign'. Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions, but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“Then a miracle occurred in the form of a plate of sandwiches.
Geryon took three and buried his mouth in a delicious block of white bread filled with tomatoes and butter and salt.
He thought about how delicious it was, how he liked slippery foods, how slipperiness can be of different kinds.
I am a philosopher of sandwiches, he decided. Things good on the inside.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“When they made love
Geryon liked to touch in slow succession each of the bones of Herakles' back
as it arched away from him into who knows what dark dream of its own, running both hands all the way down
from the base of the neck
to the end of the spine which he can cause to shiver like a root in the rain.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“They were two superior eels
at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“Depression is one of the unknown modes of being.
There are no words for a world without a self, seen with impersonal clarity.
All language can register is the slow return
to oblivion we call health when imagination automatically recolors the landscape
and habit blurs perception and language
takes up its routine flourishes.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“Small, red, and upright he waited,
gripping his new bookbag tight
in one hand and touching a lucky penny inside his coat pocket with the other,
while the first snows of winter
floated down on his eyelashes and covered the branches around him and silenced
all trace of the world.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“...And tonight—Geryon? You okay?
Yes fine, I'm listening. Tonight—?
Why do you have your jacket over your head?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Can't hear you Geryon. The jacket shifted. Geryon peered out. I said sometimes
I need a little privacy.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“Meanwhile music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“There is no person without a world.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“How does distance look?" is a simple direct question. It extends from a spaceless within to the edge of what can be loved.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God with the good sense to doubt me. What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us? For an instant God suspends assent and poof! we disappear.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“Not touching but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“He was trying to fit this Herakles onto the one he knew.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“Four of the roses were on fire.
They stood up straight and pure on the stalk, gripping the dark like prophets
and howling colossal intimacies
from the back of their fused throats.
- XXVII. MITWELT”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“She stumbled then and Geryon caught her other arm, it was like a handful of autumn. He felt huge and wrong. When is it polite to let go someone’s arm after you grab it?”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“He had a respect for facts maybe this was one.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“...there it was one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“…..in that blurred state between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul. Like the terrestial crust of the earth which is proportionately 10 times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul is a miracle of mutual pressures. Millions of kilograms of force pounding up from earth’s core on the inside to meet the cold air of the world and stop as we do, just in time.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“Outside, the natural world was enjoying a moment of total strength.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“Geryon was a monster everything about him was red”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

“...some hours later they were down
at the railroad tracks
standing close together by the switch lights. The huge night moved overhead
scattering drops of itself.”
― Anne Carson, quote from Autobiography of Red

About the author

Popular quotes

“نه! نه در آسمانها نشانی از رافت و عطوفت وجود دارد، نه در زندگی بالای سر و نه زیر پای ما و نه در درون من”
― Bohumil Hrabal, quote from Too Loud a Solitude

“Psychologically speaking (I’ll only wheel out the amateur psychology just this once, so bear with me), encounters that call up strong physical disgust or revulsion are often in fact projections of our own faults and weaknesses.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

“God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of humans are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with the quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!
And, now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.”
― Frédéric Bastiat, quote from The Law

“That’s what makes death so hard—unsatisfied curiosity. —BERYL MARKHAM,”
― James C. Collins, quote from Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

“What does responsibility mean? Responsibility means not blaming anyone or anything for your situation, including yourself. Having accepted this circumstance, this event, this problem, responsibility then means the ability to have a creative response to the situation as it is now. All problems contain the seeds of opportunity, and this awareness allows you to take the moment and transform it to a better situation or thing.”
― Deepak Chopra, quote from The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.