Carole Maso > Quotes

“I believe in books.”
― Carole Maso, The Room Lit by Roses

“How I love them. How good they are. They endure endless hours of me talking about the future. They keep me near and at the same time bid me farewell. That is what real love is.”
― Carole Maso, The Art Lover

“But sometimes even the sky is dangerous. I look up and see your face in the stars.”
― Carole Maso, The Art Lover

“One of the strangest things about writing well is that it requires two different zones in the brain--rigor and recklessness--simultaneously.”
― Carole Maso

“Huddled around the fire of the alphabet...”
― Carole Maso

“It's an honor and privilege to be next to the great mysteries, and that's what I get to do every day. Why are we here? How beautiful the Earth is. Whatever it is, large and small. There's so much that's beautiful and moving and sad, to experience that and find shapes for it, to deeply enter that meditative space. There's nothing like it. Everything else seems so pale.”
― Carole Maso

“You think an essay should have a hypothesis, a conclusion, should argue points. You really do bore me.”
― Carole Maso

“After sex, after coffee, after everything there is to be said --
The hovering and beautiful alphabet as we form our first words after making love.
And somehow I'm still alive.”
― Carole Maso, Ava

“You were a painting by Matisse, but you took sleeping pills.”
― Carole Maso, The Art Lover

“In the calm violence of your being, desire.”
― Carole Maso, Beauty Is Convulsive

“What the light looks like in the pear trees, in October, is a hundred teardrops of gold, the whole orchard weeping.”
― Carole Maso, The Art Lover

“One loves art more than life; it's better than life, don't you think, Ali? It doesn't disappoint so," she sighed. "It's not so frightening," she said, her eyes filled with terror.”
― Carole Maso

“As if thought were not our most passionate, our most ardent aspect.”
― Carole Maso, Defiance

“I weep flowers, I weep song, I bleed”
― Carole Maso, Beauty Is Convulsive

“So little goes with the body of a man. So much is left behind.”
― Carole Maso, The Art Lover

“Here is my arm. I want to live.”
― Carole Maso, Ava

“And she smiles and she utters unearthly things and she utters not in any known language, in stars and pain, pulque she says I am devouring time and the earth”
― Carole Maso, Beauty Is Convulsive

“your head is flowers, your body the body of a deer, pierced”
― Carole Maso, Beauty Is Convulsive

“Here, we turn everything into art.”
― Carole Maso, The Art Lover

“And chanting sentences is the only way to feel better finally. And writing sentences, making shapes, is the only way to feel better. Sustaining, miraculous language, that all these years keeps illness at bay.”
― Carole Maso, Break Every Rule: Essays on Language, Longing, and Moments of Desire

“This book is an invention, an act of the imagination, and in no way should be mistaken for reality, the place where much good invention originates.”
― Carole Maso

“Human blood and seawater have identical levels of potassium, calcium and magnesium.”
― Carole Maso, Ava

“Each word is a boat, a small saving thing in this increasingly dark, blood-drenched dream.”
― Carole Maso

“They trusted me as men carelessly, always, trust women-- as if this trust, this confidence was their birthright. A mistake-- in this case, at any rate.”
― Carole Maso, Defiance

“I had left her behind, again--because I could not write--write, that is, on my own terms, without concern for the marketplace, without selling out in small but grave ways: writing for magazines, or teaching prematurely, or making uncsoncious decisions that might make the work more sexy, more accessible--but for all the wrong reasons. It seemed crucial not to derail myself now, not to subvert myself, not give in.”
― Carole Maso, Break Every Rule: Essays on Language, Longing, and Moments of Desire