Angela Carter

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.

Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.

She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.

The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown.

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.

I desire therefore I exist.

Those are the voices of my brothers, darling; I love the company of wolves.

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.

Out of the frying pan into the fire! What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different!

I am entirely alone. I and my shadow fill the universe.

Anticipation is the greater part of pleasure.