Angela Carter

Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions. ”

Anxiety is the beginning of conscience, which is the parent of the soul but is not compatible with innocence. ”

You must realize that I was suffering from love and I knew him as intimately as I knew my own image in a mirror. In other words, I knew him only in relation to myself. ”

What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? ”

It is, perhaps, better to be valued as an object of passion than never to be valued at all. ”

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. ”

It is far easier for a woman to lead a blameless life than it is for a man; all she has to do is to avoid sexual intercourse like the plague. ”

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. ”

Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place. ”

Nothing is a matter of life and death except life and death. ”