Autobiography of Red

by Anne Carson

Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.

Homer fastens every substance in the world to its aptest attribute and holds them in place for epic consumption.

Can human nature not survive Without a listener?

Voyaging into the rotten ruby of the night became a contest of freedom and bad logic.

recognized each other like italics.

one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness.

Stale peace of old bedtimes filled the room. Love does not make me gentle or kind,

A pure bold longing to be gone filled him.

“How does distance look?” is a simple direct question. It extends from a spaceless within to the edge of what can be loved.

Sex is a way of getting to know someone,

SPIRIT RULES SECRETLY ALONE THE BODY ACHIEVES NOTHING

Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.

liked to plan his autobiography, in that blurred state between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open

Outside the natural world was enjoying a moment of total strength.

a numb time, caught between the tongue and the taste.

organized all his inside force to suppress this remark.

Staring at the vast black and silver nonworld moving and not moving incomprehensibly past this dangling fragment of humans he felt its indifference roar over

I see the terrifying spaces of the universe hemming me in.…

Geryon subsided into his overcoat letting the talk flow over him warm as a bath. He felt for the moment concrete and indivisible.

And for a moment the frailest leaves of life contained him in a widening happiness.

Yet Geryon did not want to become one of those people who think of nothing but their stores of pain.

But this separation of consciousness is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is to believe in an undivided being between us.…”

There are no words for a world without a self, seen with impersonal clarity.

while a fragment of Emily Dickinson chased around in his head.

All of a sudden the night was a bowl of silence.

In the space between them developed a dangerous cloud. Geryon knew he must not go back into the cloud. Desire is no light thing.

bowl of gold where the last moments of sunset were exploding—then another curve and blackness snuffed out all.

there is a link between geology and character