Autobiography of Red

by Anne Carson

I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do.

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,” “imported,” “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.

Facts are bigger in the dark.

Not touching but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh.

Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.

numb time, caught between the tongue and the taste.