Angela Carter
Angela Carter
Angela Olive Carter-Pearcewho published as Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2012, Nights at the Circus was selected as the best ever winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 May 1940
fun book mean
I think the adjective post-modernist really means mannerist. Books about books is fun but frivolous.
heart broken tragedy
A broken heart is never a tragedy. Only untimely death is a tragedy.
vices nostalgia
Nostalgia, the vice of the aged.
passion objects
It is, perhaps, better to be valued as an object of passion than never to be valued at all.
mother father facts
A mother is always a mother, since a mother is a biological fact, whilst a father is a movable feast.
sad heart autumn
Sad; so sad, those smoky-rose, smoky-mauve evenings of late Autumn, sad enough to pierce the heart.
death time fiction
The end of all stories, even if the writer forebears to mention it, is death, which is where time stops short. Sheherezade knew this, which is why she kept on spinning another story out of the bowels of the last one, never coming to a point where she could say: "This is the end." Because it would have been.
childhood alcohol comforting
[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.
father book soul
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.
mother pride ideas
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.
girl light house
A young girl would go into the wood as trustingly as Red Riding Hood to her granny's house but this light admits no ambiguities and, here, she will be trapped in her own illusion because everything in the woods is exactly as it seems.
beach loneliness ocean
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.
useless-things cash way
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.
mother children rip
Vengeful as nature herself, she loves her children only in order to devour them better and if she herself rips her own veils of self-deceit, Mother perceives in herself untold abysses of cruelty as subtle as it is refined.