Angela Carter Quotes

“She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. She has the mysterious solitude of ambiguous states; she hovers in a no-man’s land between life and death, sleeping and waking.”
― Angela Carter, The Lady of the House of Love

“Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.”
― Angela Carter, Wise Children

“I will vanish in the morning light; I was only an invention of darkness.”
― Angela Carter

“I have sharp teeth inside my mouth,
Inside my dark red lips,
And lacquer slickly hides the claws
In my red fingertips.

So I conceal my armoury.
Yours is all on view.
You think you are possessing me-
But I've got my teeth in you.”
― Angela Carter

“A mother is always a mother, since a mother is a biological fact, whilst a father is a movable feast.”
― Angela Carter, Wise Children

“What do you see when you see me?' She asked him, burying her own face in his bosom.
'Do you want the truth?'
She nodded.
'The firing squad.'
'That's not the whole truth. Try again.'
'Insatiability,' he said with some bitterness.
'That's oblique but altogether too simple. Once more,' she insisted. 'One more time.'
He was silent for several minutes.
'The map of a country in which I only exist by virtue of the extravagance of my metaphors.'
'Now you're being too sophisticated. And, besides, what metaphors do we have in common?”
― Angela Carter, Heroes and Villains

“How far does a pretence of feeling, maintained with absolute conviction, become authentic?”
― Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories

“It is, perhaps, a better thing to be valued only as an object of passion than never to be valued at all. I had never been so absolutely the mysterious other. I had become a kind of phoenix, a fabulous beast; I was an outlandish jewel.”
― Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories

“Though I still turn up my coat-collar in a lonely way and am always looking at myself in mirrors, they’re only habits and give no clue at all to my character, whatever that is. The most difficult performance in the world is acting naturally isn’t it? Everything else is artful.”
― Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories

“I should have liked to have had him beside me in a glass coffin, so that I could watch him all the time and he would not have been able to get away from me.”
― Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories

“But I do not want to paint our circumstantial portraits so that we both emerge with enough well-rounded, spuriously detailed actuality that you are forced to believe in us. I do not want to practise such sleight of hand. You must be content only with glimpses of our outlines, as if you had caught sight of our reflections in the looking-glass of somebody else’s house as you passed by the window.”
― Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories

“Sometimes it was possible for me to believe he had practised an enchantment upon me, as foxes in this country may, for, here, a fox can masquerade as human and at the best of times the high cheekbones gave to his face the aspect of a mask.”
― Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories

“Herşeye karşın onun kişiliğinde hâlâ eksik kalmış birşeyler vardı. Mobilyalı olarak kiraya verilmiş bir eve benziyordu. [sf 11]”
― Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus

“If I could see not one single soul in that wilderness of desolation all around me, then the six of us - mounts and riders, both - could boast amongst us not one soul, either, since all the best religions in the world state categorically that not beasts nor women were equipped with the flimsy, insubstantial things when the good Lord opened the gates of Eden and let Eve and her familiars thumble out.”
― Angela Carter, The Tiger's Bride

“At length the grandeur of the mountains becomes monotonous; with familiarity, the landscape ceases to provoke awe and wonder and the traveller sees the alps with the indifferent eye of those who always live there.”
― Angela Carter

“Bu tatlı seste sanki tekinsiz olan bir şey varmış, ya bu sesin sahibi büyücüymüş ya da bir büyünün etkisindeymiş gibi geldi odadakilere. Üçü de tüylerinin diken diken olduğunu hissettiler. [sf 184]”
― Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus

“Sea; sand; a sky that melts into the sea--a landscape of misty pastels with a look about it of being continiously on the point of melting.”
― Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

“There Peter sat in the new sunlight, plaiting the straw for baskets, until he saw the thing he had been taught most to fear advancing silently along the lea of an outcrop of rock.”
― Angela Carter, Saints and Strangers

“Palyaço maskesinin altında yatan o yüz, uzun yıllar önce tanışıp sevilmiş, sonra da kaybedilmiş, şimdi de yeniden bulunmuş bir sevgilinin yüzü. Onunla daha önce hç karşılaşmamış olmama, bana tümüyle yabancı bir yüz olmasına karşın, görüp tanımamdan bile önce vurgun olduğum bir yüz bu. [sf 288]”
― Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus

“[...] certo, una madre è sempre una madre, perché è un fatto biologico, mentre un padre è una festa mobile.”
― Angela Carter, Wise Children

“...the desire that no daughter of mine should ever be in a position to be able to write BY GRAND CENTRAL STATION I SAT DOWN AND WEPT -- exquisite prose though it might contain -- 'BY GRAND CENTRAL STATION I TORE OFF HIS BALLS' would be more like it, I should hope.)”
― Angela Carter

“...the desire that no daughter of mine should ever be in a position to be able to write BY GRAND CENTRAL STATION I SAT DOWN AND WEPT -- exquisite prose though it might contain. ('BY GRAND CENTRAL STATION I TORE OFF HIS BALLS' would be more like it, I should hope.)”
― Angela Carter

“The indifference of Decembral littoral suits my forlorn mood for I am a sad woman by nature, no doubt about that; how unhappy I should be in a happy world!”
― Angela Carter, Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces