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I Always Used To Suffer A Great Deal If I Let Myself Get Too Close To Reality Since The Definitive World Of The Everyday With Itshard Edges And Harsh Light Did Not Have Enough Resonance To Echo The Demands I Made Upon Experience. It Was As If I Never Experienced Experience As Experience. Living Never Lived Up To The Expectations I Had Of It--the Bovary Syndrome.

-Angela Carter

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I Always Used To

Angela Carter

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I Always Used To Suffer A Great Deal If I Let Myself Get Too Close To Reality Since The Definitive World Of The Everyday With Itshard Edges And Harsh Light Did Not Have Enough Resonance To Echo The Demands I Made Upon Experience. It Was As If I Never Experienced Experience As Experience. Living Never Lived Up To The Expectations I Had Of It--the Bovary Syndrome.

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Hollywood... Was The Place Where The United States Perpetrated Itself As A Universal Dream And Put The Dream Into Mass Production.

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I Think It's One Of The Scars In Our Culture That We Have Too High An Opinion Of Ourselves. We Align Ourselves With The Angels Instead Of The Higher Primates.

Your Green Eye Is A Reducing Chamber. If I Look Into It Long Enough, I Wil Become As Small As My Own Reflection, I Will Diminish To A Point And Vanish. I Will Be Drawn Down Into That Black Whirlpool And Be Consumed By You. I Shall Become So Small You Can Keep Me In One Of Your Osier Cages And Mock My Loss Of Liberty.

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Reciprocity Of Sensation Is Not Possible Because To Share Is To Be Robbed.

As For My Father, Few Souls Are Less Troubled. He Can Be Simply Pleased With Us, Pleased That We Exist, And, From The Vantage Point Of His Wondrously Serene Old Age, He Contemplates Our Lives Almost As If They Were Books He Can Dip Into Whenever He Wants. His Back Pages, Perhaps.

...in Their Millenial And Long-lived Patience They Knew Quite Well How, In A Hundred Years, Or A Thousand Years' Time, Or Else, Perhaps, Tomorrow, In An Hour's Time, For It Was All A Gamble, A Million To One Chance, But All The Same There Was A Chance That If They Kept On Shaking Their Chains, One Day, Some Day, The Clasps Upon The Shackles Would Part.

He Is The Intermediary Between Us, His Audience, The Living, And They, The Dolls, The Undead, Who Cannot Live At All And Yet Who Mimic The Living In Every Detail Since, Though They Cannot Speak Or Weep, Still They Project Those Signals Of Signification We Instantly Recognize As Language.

She Stood Lost In Eternity Wearing A Crazy Dress, Watching The Immense Sky.

I Had The Brief Notion That His Heart, Pressed Flat As A Flower, Crimson And Thin As Tissue Paper, Lay In This File. It Was A Very Thin One.

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The Clown May Be The Source Of Mirth, But - Who Shall Make The Clown Laugh?

I Drew The Curtains To Conceal The Sight Of My Father's Farewell; My Spite Was Sharp As Broken Glass.

We Must All Make Do With The Rags Of Love We Find Flapping On The Scarecrow Of Humanity.

Drosselmeier Had Unwittingly Exposed Himself To An Overdose Of Reality, And It Had Destroyed His Reason.

What A Joy It Is To Dance And Sing!

For Hours, For Days, For Years, She Had Wandered Endlessly Within Herself But Never Met Anybody, Nobody.

Midnight, And The Clock Strikes. It Is Christmas Day, The Werewolves Birthday, The Door Of The Solstice Still Wide Enough Open To Let Them All Slink Through.

It's Every Woman's Tragedy, That, After A Certain Age, She Looks Like A Female Impersonator. Mind You, We've Known Some Lovely Female Impersonators, In Our Time.

His Wedding Gift, Clasped Round My Throat. A Choker Of Rubies, Two Inches Wide, Like An Extraordinarily Precious Slit Throat.

Nostalgia, The Vice Of The Aged.

Art Need No Longer Be An Account Of Past Sensations.

Nothing Is A Matter Of Life And Death Except Life And Death.

Not Many People Can Boast A Photo Of Their Grandmother Posing For Kiddiporn.

Why Do You Do Up Your Hair In Those Tortured Plaits, Now, Melanie? Why? Because, She Said. You Know That's No Answer. You're Spoiling Your Pretty Looks, Pet. Come Here. She Did Not Move. He Ground Out His Cigarette On The Window-ledge And Laughed. Come Here, He Said Again, Softly. So She Went.

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Do Not Think I Do Not Realise What I Am Doing. I Am Making A Composition Using The Following Elements: The Winter Beach; The Winter Moon; The Ocean; The Women; The Pine Trees; The Riders; The Driftwood; The Shells; The Shapes Of Darkness And The Shapes Of Water; And The Refuse. These Are All Inimical To My Loneliness Because Of Their Indifference To It. Out Of These Pieces Of Inimical Indifference, I Intend To Represent The Desolate Smile Of Winter Which, As You Must Have Gathered, Is The Smile I Wear.

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Strangers Used To Gather Together At The Cinema And Sit Together In The Dark, Like Ancient Greeks Participating In The Mysteries, Dreaming The Same Dream In Unison.

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He Was A Lovely Man In Many Ways. But He Kept On Insisting On Forgiving Me When There Was Nothing To Forgive.

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Ordered Me A Sky From A Florist

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I Always Used To Suffer A Great Deal If I Let Myself Get Too Close To Reality Since The Definitive World Of The Everyday With Itshard Edges And Harsh Light Did Not Have Enough Resonance To Echo The Demands I Made Upon Experience. It Was As If I Never Experienced Experience As Experience. Living Never Lived Up To The Expectations I Had Of It--the Bovary Syndrome.

There Are Lots Of Things That You Can Brush Under The Carpet About Yourself Until You're Faced With Somebody Whose Needs Won't Be Put Off.

Soon, Nostalgia Will Be Another Name For Europe.

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Home Is Where The Heart Is

In The Mythic Schema Of All Relations Between Men And Women, Man Proposes, And Woman Is Disposed Of.

Not For Moorcock The Painful, Infrequent Excretion Of Dry Little Novels Like So Many Rabbit Pellets; His Is The Grand, Messy Fluxitself, In All Its Heroic Vulgarity, Its Unquenchable Optimism, Its Enthusiasm For The Inexhaustible Variousness Of Things.

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?

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.

I Think The Adjective Post-modernist Really Means Mannerist. Books About Books Is Fun But Frivolous.

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Hope For The Best, Expect The Worst.

Hoping For The Best

Those Are The Voices Of My Brothers, Darling; I Love The Company Of Wolves.

To Pin Your Hopes Upon The Future Is To Consign Those Hopes To A Hypothesis, Which Is To Say, A Nothingness. Here And Now Is What We Must Contend With.

One Beast And Only One Howls In The Woods By Night.

His Contagious Conviction That Our Love Was Unique And Desperate Infected Me With An Anxious Sickness; Soon We Would Learn To Treat One Another With The Circumspect Tenderness Of Comrades Who Are Amputees, For We Were Surrounded By The Most Moving Images Of Evanesecence, Fireworks, Morning Glories, The Old, Children. But The Most Moving Of These Images Were The Intagible Relfections Of Ourselves We Saw In One Another's Eyes, Reflections Of Nothing But Appearances, In A City Dedicated To Seeming, And, Try As We Might To Possess The Essence Of Each Other's Otherness, We Would Inevitably Fail.

Out Of The Frying Pan Into The Fire! What Is Marriage But Prostitution To One Man Instead Of Many? No Different!

I See Her As A Series Of Marvellous Shapes Formed At Random In The Kaleidoscope Of Desire.

My Mother Learned That She Was Carrying Me At About The Same Time The Second World War Was Declared; With The Family Talent For Magic Realism, She Once Told Me She Had Been To The Doctor's On The Very Day.

A Book Is Simply The Container Of An Idea-like A Bottle; What Is Inside The Book Is What Matters.

And Each Stroke Of His Tongue Ripped Off Skin After Successive Skin, All The Skins Of A Life In The World, And Left Behind A Nascent Patina Of Shining Hairs. My Earrings Turned Back To Water And Trickled Down My Shoulders; I Shrugged The Drops Off My Beautiful Fur.

F.r. Leavis's "eat Up Your Broccoli" Approach To Fiction Emphasises This Junkfood/wholefood Dichotomy. If Reading A Novel--for Theeighteenth Century Reader, The Most Frivolous Of Diversions--did Not, By The Middle Of The Twentieth Century, Make You A Better Person In Some Way, Then You Might As Well Flush The Offending Volume Down The Toilet, Which Was By Far The Best Place For The Undigested Excreta Of Dubious Nourishment.

Fine Art, That Exists For Itself Alone, Is Art In A Final State Of Impotence. If Nobody, Including The Artist, Acknowledges Art As A Means Of Knowing The World, Then Art Is Relegated To A Kind Of Rumpus Room Of The Mind And The Irresponsibility Of The Artist And The Irrelevance Of Art To Actual Living Becomes Part And Parcel Of The Practice Of Art.

It Shone On Everyone, Whether They Had A Contract Or Not. The Most Democratic Thing I'd Ever Seen, That California Sunshine.

Before He Can Become A Wolf, The Lycanthrope Strips Naked. If You Spy A Naked Man Among The Pines, You Must Run As If The Devil Were After You.

And, Oh God, In My Misspent Youth As A Housewife, I, Too, Used To Bake Bread, In Those Hectic And Desolating Days Just Prior To The Woman's Movement, When Middle-class Women Were Supposed To Be Wonderful Wives And Mothers, Gracious Hostesses.... I Used To Feel So Womanly When I Was Baking My Filthy Bread.

For All Cats Have This Particularity, Each And Every One, From The Meanest Alley Sneaker To The Proudest, Whitest She That Ever Graced A Pontiff's Pillow — We Have Our Smiles, As It Were, Painted On. Those Small, Cool, Quite Mona Lisa Smiles That Smile We Must, No Matter Whether It's Been Fun Or It's Been Not. So All Cats Have A Politician's Air; We Smile And Smile And So They Think We're Villains

A Day Without An Argument Is Like An Egg Without Salt.

He Was Prepared To Die For It, As One Of Baudelaire's Dandies Might Have Been Prepared To Kill Himself In Order To Preserve Himself In The Condition Of A Work Of Art, For He Wanted To Make This Experience A Masterpiece Of Experience Which Absolutely Transcended The Everyday. And This Would Annihilate The Effects Of The Cruel Drug, Boredom, To Which He Was Addicted Although, Perhaps, The Element Of Boredom Which Is Implicit In An Affair So Isolated From The Real World Was Its Principle Appeal For Him.

His Main Principles Were Indeed As Follows: Everything It Is Possible To Imagine Can Also Exist.

Among The Monsters, I Am Well Hidden; Who Looks For A Leaf In A Forest?

She Stands And Moves Within The Invisible Pentacle Of Her Own Virginity. She Is An Unbroken Egg: She Is A Sealed Vessel; She Has Inside Her A Magic Space The Entrance To Which Is Shut Tight With A Plug Of Membrane; She Is A Closed System; She Does Not Know How To Shiver.

I Don't Really Think That Writers, Even Great Writers, Are Prophets, Or Sages, Or Messiah-like Figures; Writing Is A Lonely, Sedentary Occupation And A Touch Of Megalomania Can Be Comforting Around Five On A November Afternoon When You Haven't Seen Anybody All Day.

He Is, I Think, Already Pondering A Magisterial Project: That Of Buggering The English Language, The Ultimate Revenge Of The Colonialised.

Losing Their Names, These Things Underwent A Process Of Uncreation.

The Tiger Will Never Lie Down With The Lamb; He Acknowledges No Pact That Is Not Reciprocal. The Lamb Must Learn To Run With The Tigers.

Anxiety Is The Beginning Of Conscience, Which Is The Parent Of The Soul But Is Not Compatible With Innocence.

I Am Entirely Alone. I And My Shadow Fill The Universe.

Cats Of All Kinds Weave In And Out Of The Text; Burroughs Has Clearly Taken To Them In A Big Way In His Old Age And Seems Torn Between A Fear They Will Betray Him Into Sentimentality And A Resigned Acceptance That A Man Can't Be Ironic All The Time.

The End Of Exile Is The End Of Being.

Our Fingernails Match Our Toenails, Match Our Lipstick Match Our Rouge...the Habit Of Applying Warpaint Outlasts The Battle.

The Wolf Is Carnivore Incarnate And He's As Cunning As He Is Ferocious; Once He's Had A Taste Of Flesh Then Nothing Else Will Do.

They Were Connoisseurs Of Boredom. They Savoured The Various Bouquets Of The Subtly Differentiated Boredoms Which Rose From The Long, Wasted Hours At The Dead End Of Night.

[t]ea, That Uniquely English Meal, That Unnecessary Collation At Which No Stimulants--neither Alcohol Nor Meat--are Served, That Comforting Repast Of Which To Partake Is As Good As Second Childhood.

A Fairy Tale Is The Kind Of Story In Which One King Goes To Another King To Borrow A Cup Of Sugar

I Haven't Changed Much, Over The Years. I Use Less Adjectives, Now, And Have A Kinder Heart, Perhaps.

One Day, Annabel Saw The Sun And Moon In The Sky At The Same Time. The Sight Filled Her With A Terror Which Entirely Consumed Her And Did Not Leave Her Until The Night Closed In Catastrophe For She Had No Instinct For Self-preservation If She Was Confronted By Ambiguities.

To Ride A Bicycle Is In Itself Some Protection Against Superstitious Fears, Since The Bicycle Is The Product Of Pure Reason Applied To Motion. Geometry At The Service Of Man! Give Me Two Spheres And A Straight Line And I Will Show You How Far I Can Take Them. Voltaire Himself Might Have Invented The Bicycle, Since It Contributes So Much To Man’s Welfare And Nothing At All To His Bane. Beneficial To The Health, It Emits No Harmful Fumes And Permits Only The Most Decorous Speeds. How Can A Bicycle Ever Be An Implement Of Harm?

And, Conversely, She Went On To Herself, Sneering At The Grand Duke's Palace, Poverty Is Wasted On The Poor, Who Never Know How To Make The Best Of Things, Are Only The Rich Without Money, Are Just As Useless At Looking After Themselves, Can't Handle Their Cash Just Like The Rich Can't, Always Squandering It On Bright, Pretty, Useless Things In Just The Same Way.

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