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There's A Theory, One I Find Persuasive, That The Quest For Knowledge Is, At Bottom, The Search For The Answer To The Question: Where Was I Before I Was Born. In The Beginning Was What? Perhaps, In The Beginning, There Was A Curious Room, A Room Like This One, Crammed With Wonders; And Now The Room And All It Contains Are Forbidden You, Although It Was Made Just For You, Had Been Prepared For You Since Time Began, And You Will Spend All Your Life Trying To Remember It.

-Angela Carter

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There's A Theory, One

Angela Carter

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There's A Theory, One I Find Persuasive, That The Quest For Knowledge Is, At Bottom, The Search For The Answer To The Question: Where Was I Before I Was Born. In The Beginning Was What? Perhaps, In The Beginning, There Was A Curious Room, A Room Like This One, Crammed With Wonders; And Now The Room And All It Contains Are Forbidden You, Although It Was Made Just For You, Had Been Prepared For You Since Time Began, And You Will Spend All Your Life Trying To Remember It.

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Iconic Clothing Has Been Secularized. . . . A Guardsman In A Dress Uniform Is Ostensibly An Icon Of Aggression; His Coat Is Red As The Blood He Hopes To Shed. Seen On A Coat-hanger, With No Man Inside It, The Uniform Loses All Its Blustering Significance And, To The Innocent Eye Seduced By Decorative Colour And Tactile Braid, It Is As Abstract In Symbolic Information As A Parasol To An Eskimo. It Becomes Simply Magnificent.

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The Lovely Hazard Girls', They Used To Call Them. Huh. Lovely Is As Lovely Does; If They Looked Like What They Behave Like, They'd Frighten Little Children.

His Touch Both Consoles And Devastates Me; I Feel My Heart Pulse, Then Wither, Naked As A Stone On The Roaring Mattress While The Lovely, Moony Night Slides Through The Window To Dapple The Flanks Of This Innocent Who Makes Cages To Keep The Sweet Birds In. Eat Me, Drink Me; Thirsty, Cankered, Goblin-ridden, I Go Back And Back To Him To Have His Fingers Strip The Tattered Skin Away And Clothe Me In His Dress Of Water, This Garment That Drenches Me, Its Slithering Odour, Its Capacity For Drowning.

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

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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.

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.

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

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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.

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.

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Anticipation Is The Greater Part Of Pleasure.

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Mother Is In Herself A Concrete Denial Of The Idea Of Sexual Pleasure Since Her Sexuality Has Been Placed At The Service Of Reproductive Function Alone. She Is The Perpetually Violated Passive Principle; Her Autonomy Has Been Sufficiently Eroded By The Presence Within Her Of The Embryo She Brought To Term. Her Unthinking Ability To Reproduce, Which Is Her Pride, Is, Since It Is Beyond Choice, Not A Specific Virtue Of Her Own.

If Miss Means Respectably Unmarried, And Mrs. Respectably Married, Then Ms. Means Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink.

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

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

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

The Notion Of A Universality Of Human Experience Is A Confidence Trick And The Notion Of A Universality Of Female Experience Is A Clever Confidence Trick.

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.

If The Barbarians Are Destroyed, Who Will We Then Be Able To Blame For The Bad Things?

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

Irish Was A Man Of Parts Even If Some Of Them Didn't Work Too Well.

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