“
Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Desire is no light thing.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Under the seams runs the pain.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being--neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being.
”
”
Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
“
He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Time isn't made of anything. It is an abstraction. Just a meaning that we impose upon motion.
”
”
Anne Carson
“
They were two superior eels
at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
How does distance look?" is a simple direct question. It extends from a spaceless within to the edge of what can be loved.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning 'placed on top', 'added', 'appended', 'foreign'. Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions, but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Not touching but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
There is no person without a world.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
When they made love
Geryon liked to touch in slow succession each of the bones of Herakles' back
as it arched away from him into who knows what dark dream of its own, running both hands all the way down
from the base of the neck
to the end of the spine which he can cause to shiver like a root in the rain.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Meanwhile music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Depression is one of the unknown modes of being.
There are no words for a world without a self, seen with impersonal clarity.
All language can register is the slow return
to oblivion we call health when imagination automatically recolors the landscape
and habit blurs perception and language
takes up its routine flourishes.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God with the good sense to doubt me. What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us? For an instant God suspends assent and poof! we disappear.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Then a miracle occurred in the form of a plate of sandwiches.
Geryon took three and buried his mouth in a delicious block of white bread filled with tomatoes and butter and salt.
He thought about how delicious it was, how he liked slippery foods, how slipperiness can be of different kinds.
I am a philosopher of sandwiches, he decided. Things good on the inside.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Small, red, and upright he waited,
gripping his new bookbag tight
in one hand and touching a lucky penny inside his coat pocket with the other,
while the first snows of winter
floated down on his eyelashes and covered the branches around him and silenced
all trace of the world.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
...And tonight—Geryon? You okay?
Yes fine, I'm listening. Tonight—?
Why do you have your jacket over your head?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Can't hear you Geryon. The jacket shifted. Geryon peered out. I said sometimes
I need a little privacy.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
...there it was one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
And now time is rushing towards them
where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces,
night at their back.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Four of the roses were on fire.
They stood up straight and pure on the stalk, gripping the dark like prophets
and howling colossal intimacies
from the back of their fused throats.
- XXVII. MITWELT
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
She stumbled then and Geryon caught her other arm, it was like a handful of autumn. He felt huge and wrong. When is it polite to let go someone’s arm after you grab it?
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Geryon was a monster everything about him was red
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
It was the hour when snow goes blue
and streetlights come on and a hare may
pause on the tree line as still as a word in a book.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Are there many little boys who think they are a
Monster? But in my case I am right said Geryon to the
Dog they were sitting on the bluffs The dog regarded him
Joyfully
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
He was trying to fit this Herakles onto the one he knew.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Outside, the natural world was enjoying a moment of total strength.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
He had a respect for facts maybe this was one.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
…..in that blurred state between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul. Like the terrestial crust of the earth which is proportionately 10 times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul is a miracle of mutual pressures. Millions of kilograms of force pounding up from earth’s core on the inside to meet the cold air of the world and stop as we do, just in time.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
The red world And corresponding red breezes
Went on Geryon did not
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Lava bread makes you passionate.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
And now time is rushing towards them
where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces, night at their back.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
...some hours later they were down
at the railroad tracks
standing close together by the switch lights. The huge night moved overhead
scattering drops of itself.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
These days Geryon was experiencing a pain not felt since childhood.
His wings were struggling. They tore against each other on his shoulders
like the little mindless red animals they were.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Although a monster Geryon could be charming in company.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
As in childhood we live sweeping close to the sky and now, what dawn is this.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
You remember I had a strong inclination all my life to be a painter. Under different circumstances I would rather have been a painter than to bother with these god-damn words. I never actually thought of myself as a poet but I knew I had to be an artist in some way.
”
”
William Carlos Williams (I Wanted to Write a Poem: The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet (New Directions Paperbook))
“
76. David Hume – Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
77. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile – or, On Education, The Social Contract
78. Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
79. Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations
80. Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace
81. Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography
82. James Boswell – Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D.
83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier – Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry)
84. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison – Federalist Papers
85. Jeremy Bentham – Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions
86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust; Poetry and Truth
87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Analytical Theory of Heat
88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History
89. William Wordsworth – Poems
90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems; Biographia Literaria
91. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice; Emma
92. Carl von Clausewitz – On War
93. Stendhal – The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love
94. Lord Byron – Don Juan
95. Arthur Schopenhauer – Studies in Pessimism
96. Michael Faraday – Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity
97. Charles Lyell – Principles of Geology
98. Auguste Comte – The Positive Philosophy
99. Honoré de Balzac – Père Goriot; Eugenie Grandet
100. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men; Essays; Journal
101. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter
102. Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America
103. John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography
104. Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography
105. Charles Dickens – Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times
106. Claude Bernard – Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
107. Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience; Walden
108. Karl Marx – Capital; Communist Manifesto
109. George Eliot – Adam Bede; Middlemarch
110. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick; Billy Budd
111. Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov
112. Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary; Three Stories
113. Henrik Ibsen – Plays
114. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales
115. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger
116. William James – The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism
117. Henry James – The American; The Ambassadors
118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals;The Will to Power
119. Jules Henri Poincaré – Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method
120. Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
121. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces
”
”
Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading)
“
And for a moment the frailest leaves of life contained him in a widening happiness.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
The instant of nature
forming between them drained every drop from the walls of his life
leaving behind just ghosts
rustling like an old map.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Ascent of the rapist up the stairs seems as slow as lava. She listens to the black space where his consciousness is, moving towards her.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Clothes as text, clothes as narration, clothes as a story. Clothes as the story of our lives. And if you were to gather all the clothes you have ever owned in all your life, each baby shoe and winter coat and wedding dress, you would have your autobiography. You could wear, once more, your own life in all its stages, from whatever they wrapped you in when you emerged from the dark red naked warmth of the womb to your deathbed.
”
”
Linda Grant (The Thoughtful Dresser)
“
This was when Geryon liked to plan his autobiography; in that blurred state, between awake and asleep. When too many intake values are open in the soul, like the terrestrial crust of the earth.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Golden eagles don`t mate with bald eagles, deer don`t mate with antelope, gray wolves don`t mate with red wolves. Just look at domesticated animals, at mongrel dogs, and mixed breed horses, and you`ll know the Great Mystery didn`t intend them to be that way. We weakened the species and introduced disease by mixing what should be kept seperate. Among humans, intermarriage weakens the respect people have for themselves and for their traditions. It undermines clarity of spirit and mind.
”
”
Russell Means (Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means)
“
Geryon was amazed at himself. He saw Herakles just about every day now.
The instant of nature
forming between them drained every drop from the walls of his life
leaving behind just ghosts
rustling like an old map. He had nothing to say to anyone. He felt loose and shiny.
He burned in the presence of his mother
I hardly know you anymore, she said leaning against the doorway of his room.
It had rained suddenly at suppertime,
now sunset was startling drops at the window. Stale peace of old bedtimes
filled the room. Love does not
make me gentle or kind, thought Geryon as he and his mother eyed each other
from opposite shores of the light
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Like the terrestrial crust of the earth / which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul / is a miracle of mutual pressures.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Yellow? said Geryon. And he was thinking Yellow! Yellow! Even in dreams he doesn’t know me at all! Yellow!
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
He / thought of women. / What is it like to be a woman / listening in the dark? Black mantle of silence / stretches between them like geothermal pressure. / Ascent of the rapist up the stairs seems as slow as / lava. She listens / to the blank space where / his consciousness is, moving towards her. Lava can / move as slow as / nine hours per inch. [...] She wonders if / he is listening too. The cruel thing is, she falls asleep / listening.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Somehow Geryon made it to adolescence. Then he met Herakles and the kingdoms of his life all shifted down a few notches. ... Geryon was going into the Bus Depot one Friday night about three a.m. to get change to call home. Herakles stepped oof the bus from New Mexico and Geryon came fast around the corner of the platform and there it was one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness. The world poured back and forth between their eyes once or twice.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Geryon closed his eyes and listened to engines vibrating deep in the moon-splashed
canals of his brain.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
A paste of blue cloud untangled itself on the red sky over the harbour.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Aztán megindult feléjük az idő,
ahogy karjukkal egymáshoz simulva álltak, arcukon a halhatatlanság,
hátukban az éjszaka.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
A gust of night pushed its way in the door
and everyone inside wavered once like stalks in a field then resumed their talk.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Would this day never end? His eye traveled to the clock at the front of the room and he fell into the pool of his favorite question.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
At what point does one say of a man that he has become unreal? He hugged his overcoat closer and tried to assemble in his mind Heidegger’s argument about the use of moods. We would think ourselves continuous with the world if we did not have moods. It is state-of-mind that discloses to us (Heidegger claims) that we are beings who have been thrown into something else.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Most / of those he interviewed for the science project had to admit they did not hear the cries of the roses / being burned alive in the noonday sun. Like horses, Geryon would say helpfully, / like horses in war. No, they shook their heads./ Why is grass called blades? he asked them. Isn’t it because of the clicking? / They stared at him. You should be / interviewing roses not people, said the science teacher. Geryon liked this idea. / The last page of his project / was a photograph of his mother's rosebush under the kitchen window. / Four od the roses were on fire. / They stood up straight and pure on the stalk, gripping the dark like prophets / and howling colossal intimacies / from the back of their fused throats.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
They were using her feinting body to erase their present and catapult themselves into a fantasy where sex-starved women lay submissive and split open like red, ripe watermelons.
”
”
Maya Angelou (Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #3))
“
May god favour you with dreams
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
The huge night moved overhead
scattering drops of itself.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
But when justice is done
the world drops away.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Forró
volt a hang, mint egy szín belseje.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
He felt Herakles' hand move on his thigh and Geryon's head went back like a poppy in a breeze --
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
XII. WINGS Steps off a scraped March sky and sinks Up into the blind Atlantic morning One small Red dog jumping across the beach miles below Like a freed shadow
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Up against another human being one's own procedures take on definition.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
How does distance look?" is a simple direct question. It extends from a spaceless
within to the edge
of what can be loved.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
It happens to me frequently.
You disappear? Yes and then come back.
Moments of death I call them.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Who can a monster blame for being red?
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
He picked his way carefully
toward the sex question. Why is it a question?
He understood
that people need
acts of attention from one another, does it
really matter which acts?
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Don't want to be free want to be with you.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
I have heard that in the United States, people remember exactly what they were doing when planes hit the Twin Towers. In my country, too, we remember a plane crash that way. There is this difference: On September 11, nearly three thousand people died. In Rwanda, smaller in size and population than Ohio, the number was three times that many, every day, for a hundred days.
”
”
Denise Uwimana (From Red Earth: A Rwandan Story of Healing and Forgiveness)
“
It is a black-and-white photograph showing a naked young man in fetal position.
He has entitled it "No Tail!"
The fantastic fingerwork of his wings is outspread on the bed like a black lace map of South America.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
We used to have a family game, invented by my sister and a friend of hers - it was called 'Agatha's Husbands'. The idea was that they picked out two or at the most three of the most repellent looking strangers in a room, and it was then put to me that i had to choose one of them as a husband, on pain of death or slow torture by the Chinese.
'now then, Agatha, which will you have - the fat young one with pimples, and the scurfy head, or that black one like a gorilla with the bulging eyes?'
'Oh I can't - they're so awful.'
'You must - it's got to be one of them. Or else red hot needles and water torture.'
'Oh dear, then the gorilla.
”
”
Agatha Christie (Agatha Christie: An Autobiography)
“
Do you have change for a dollar? Geryon heard Geryon say. No. Herakles stared straight at Geryon. But I'll give you a quarter for free. Why would you do that? I believe in being gracious. Some hours later they were down at the railroad tracks standing close together by the switch lights. The huge night moved overhead scattering drops of itself. You're cold, said Herakles suddenly, your hands are cold. Here. He put Geryon's hands inside his shirt.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Pass down an alley then turn a corner and there it is. Volcano in a wall.
Do you see that, says Ancash.
Beautiful, Herakles breathes out. He is looking at the men.
I mean the fire, says Ancash.
Herakles grins in the dark. Ancash watches the flames.
We are amazing beings, Geryon is thinking. We are neighbors of fire.
And now time is rushing towards them where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces, night at their back.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
It had rained suddenly at suppertime,
now sunset was startling drops at the window. Stale peace of old bedtimes
filled the room. Love does not
make me gentle or kind, thought Geryon as he and his mother eyed each other
from opposite shores of the light.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
In Berkeley and San Francisco, the revolution didn't seem to far away. A lot of white radicals, hippies, Chicanos, Blacks, and Asians were ready to get down. But i hadn't forgotten the hard hats and the red necks and the bible belt and the so called middle amerikans who had elected Nixon. I couldn't imagine how the "new left" was talking to those people, much less organizing and changing their minds. I decided the only way i would come up with answers was to on keep studying and struggling. I didn't know how half of what i was studying would fit in but i figured it would all come in handy some day. I read about guerrilla warfare and clandestine struggle without having the faintest idea that one day i would go underground. It's kind of funny when i think about it because reading that stuff had probably saved my life a million times.
”
”
Assata Shakur (Assata: An Autobiography)
“
Water! Out from between two crouching masses of the world the word leapt. ———— It was raining on his face. He forgot for a moment that he was a brokenheart then he remembered. Sick lurch downward to Geryon trapped in his own bad apple. Each morning a shock to return to the cut soul.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
A fast note about Ice-T's autobiography: There's a section where he tells a story about hanging out with Flavor Flav that involves going to Red Lobster in a Ferrari. I suspect the phrase "going to Red Lobster in a Ferrari" is the most accurate description of Flavor Flav anyone will ever come up with.
”
”
Shea Serrano (The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed)
“
Three ancient musicians hunched there— piano, guitar, accordion. None of them looked less than seventy years old, the accordion player so frail each time he swayed his shoulders around a corner of the melody Geryon feared the accordion would crush him flat. It gradually became clear that nothing could crush this man. Hardly glancing at one another the three of them played as one person, in a state of pure discovery. They tore clear and clicked and locked and unlocked, they shot their eyebrows up and down. They leaned together and wove apart, they rose and cut away and stalked one another and flew up in a cloud and sank back down on waves.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
I wanted an imagination that would inhabit a world of fact, descend like a shining light upon the ordinary life of Eden Street, and not force me to exist in an "elsewhere". I wanted the light to shine upon the pigeons of Grey Street, the plum trees in our garden, the two japonica bushes (one red, one yellow), our pine plantations and gully, our summer house, our lives, and our home, the world of Oamaru, the kingdom by the sea. I refused to accept that if I were to fulfil my secret ambition to be a poet, I should spend my imaginative life among the nightingales instead of among the wax-eyes and the fantails. I wanted my life to be the "other world".
”
”
Janet Frame (To the Is-land: An Autobiography (Autobiography, #1))
“
For the flip side of the record, we preformed yet another Dragnet parody, "Little Blue Riding Hood." The announcer, Hy Averback, explained that the color had been changed to prevent an investigation. Those were the McCarthy witch-hunting days and no one wanted to get caught being "Red." So of course, I was Little Blue Riding Hood with a sweet gentle little voice different from the maiden who was almost devoured by the dragon. I was also Grandma.
”
”
June Foray (Did You Grow Up with Me, Too?: The Autobiography of June Foray)
“
And even in the open air the stench of whiskey was appalling. To this fiendish poison, I am certain, the greater part of the squalor I saw is due. Many of these vermin were obviously not foreigners—I counted at least five American countenances in which a certain vanished decency half showed through the red whiskey bloating. Then I reflected upon the power of wine, and marveled how self-respecting persons can imbibe such stuff, or permit it to be served upon their tables. It is the deadliest enemy with which humanity is faced. Not all the European wars could produce a tenth of the havock occasioned among men by the wretched fluid which responsible governments allow to be sold openly. Looking upon that mob of sodden brutes, my mind’s eye pictured a scene of different kind; a table bedecked with spotless linen and glistening silver, surrounded by gentlemen immaculate in evening attire—and in the reddening faces of those gentlemen I could trace the same lines which appeared in full development of the beasts of the crowd. Truly, the effects of liquor are universal, and the shamelessness of man unbounded. How can reform be wrought in the crowd, when supposedly respectable boards groan beneath the goblets of rare old vintages? Is mankind asleep, that its enemy is thus entertained as a bosom friend? But a week or two ago, at a parade held in honour of the returning Rhode Island National Guard, the Chief Executive of this State, Mr. Robert Livingston Beeckman, prominent in New York, Newport, and Providence society, appeared in such an intoxicated condition that he could scarce guide his mount, or retain his seat in the saddle, and he the guardian of the liberties and interests of that Colony carved by the faith, hope, and labour of Roger Williams from the wilderness of savage New-England! I am perhaps an extremist on the subject of prohibition, but I can see no justification whatsoever for the tolerance of such a degrading demon as drink.
”
”
H.P. Lovecraft (Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters)
“
There were glamorous young men with dyed hair who rustled like old cellophane. Older men had airs of sophistication and cold grace, giving the impression that if they were not so terribly tired they would go to places (known only to a select few) where the conversation was more scintillating and the congregation more interesting.
There were young women who had the exotic sheen of recently fed forest animals. Although they moved their fine heads languorously this way and that, nothing in the room excited their appetites. Unfashionable red lips cut across their white faces, and the crimson fingernails, as pointed as surgical instruments, heightened the predatory effect. Older, sadder women were more interesting to me. Voluminous skirts and imported shawls did not hide their heavy bodies, nor was their unattractiveness shielded by the clanks of chains and ribbons of beads, or by pale pink lips and heavily drawn doe eyes. Their presence among the pretty people enchanted me. It was like seeing frogs buzzed by iridescent dragonflies.
”
”
Maya Angelou (Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #3))
“
and there it was one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness.
The world poured back and forth between their eyes once or twice.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Ők voltak a tartály fenekén
a legfenségesebb angolnák, és mint a dőlt betűk, felismerték egymást.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Az alámerülés az éj rohadt rubinjába a szabadság
és a rossz logika versengésévé változott.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
Gyermekként úgy élünk, szinte az eget súroljuk, de most miféle virradat ez.
”
”
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
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Outside the dark pink air
was already hot and alive with cries.
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Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
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New Ending.
All over the world the beautiful red breezes went on blowing hand
in hand.
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Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
“
The next morning the newspapers carried the news that while our meeting was being held there had been staged in Paris, Texas, one of the most awful lynchings and burnings this country has ever witnessed. A Negro had been charged with ravishing and murdering a five-year-old girl. He had been arrested and imprisoned while preparations were made to burn him alive. The local papers issued bulletins detailing the preparations, the schoolchildren had been given a holiday to see a man burned alive, and the railroads ran excursions and brought people of the surrounding country to witness the event, which was in broad daylight with the authorities aiding and abetting this horror. The dispatches told in detail how he had been tortured with red-hot irons searing his flesh for hours before finally the flames were lit which put an end to his agony. They also told how the mob fought over the hot ashes for bones, buttons, and teeth for souvenirs.
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Ida B. Wells-Barnett (Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Negro American Biographies and Autobiographies))
“
The next day I was in my car driving along the freeway when at a red light another car pulled alongside. A white woman was driving and on the passenger’s side, next to me, was a white man. “Malcolm X!” he called out—and when I looked, he stuck his hand out of his car, across at me, grinning. “Do you mind shaking hands with a white man?” Imagine that! Just as the traffic light turned green, I told him, “I don’t mind shaking hands with human beings. Are you one?
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Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
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IN ONE OF his last psychoanalytic papers, D. W. Winnicott wrote: Fear of breakdown is the fear of a breakdown that has already been experienced.
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Maggie Nelson (The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial)
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After years of feeling like the dutiful daughter, now I just felt like a complete shit.
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Maggie Nelson (The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial)
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Clothes as text, clothes as narration, clothes as a story. Clothes as the story of our lives. And if you were to gather together all the clothes you have ever owned in all your life, each baby shoe and winter coat and wedding dress, you would have your own autobiography. You could wear, once more, your own life in all its stages, from whatever they wrapped you in when you emerged from the dark red naked warmth of the womb, to your deathbed.
As if the textile itself has memory, formed as it does out of its intimate closeness with our bodies, a coat or a dress or a pair of trousers is a witness to the fact that once we went for a job interview, or on a hot date. Or that we got married. The dress was there with us, it’s proof of who we once were. The clothes we wear, they comfort and protect us; they allow us to be who we want to be.
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Linda Grant (The Thoughtful Dresser)
“
Clothes as text, clothes as narration, clothes as a story. Clothes as the story of our lives. And if you were to gather together all the clothes you have ever owned in all your life, each baby shoe and winter coat and wedding dress, you would have your own autobiography. You could wear, once more, your own life in all its stages, from whatever they wrapped you in when you emerged from the dark red naked warmth of the womb, to your deathbed.
As if the textile itself has memory, formed as it does out of its intimate closeness with our bodies, a coat or a dress or a pair of trousers is a witness to the fact that once we went for a job interview, or on a hot date. Or that we got married. The dress was there with us, it’s proof of who we once were. The clothes we wear, they comfort and protect us; they allow us to be who we want to be.
”
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Linda Grant (The Thoughtful Dresser)
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And you’ll see black women wearing these green and pink and purple and red and platinum-blonde wigs. They’re all more ridiculous than a slapstick comedy. It makes you wonder if the Negro has completely lost his sense of identity, lost touch with himself.
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Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
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Geryon watched the top of Herakles’ head and felt his limits returning. Nothing to say. Nothing.
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Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
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In Geryon’s autobiography this page has a photograph of some red rabbit giggle tied with a white ribbon. He has titled it “Jealous of My Little Sensations.
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Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
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How does distance look?” is a simple direct question. It extends from a spaceless within to the edge of what can be loved.
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Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
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When I had been around Harlem long enough to show signs of permanence, inevitably I got a nickname that would identify me beyond any confusion with two other red-conked and well-known “Reds” who were around. I had met them both; in fact, later on I’d work with them both. One, “St. Louis Red,” was a professional armed robber. When I was sent to prison, he was serving time for trying to stick up a dining car steward on a train between New York and Philadelphia. He was finally freed; now, I hear, he is in prison for a New York City jewel robbery. The other was “Chicago Red.” We became good buddies in a speakeasy where later on I was a waiter; Chicago Red was the funniest dishwasher on this earth. Now he’s making his living being funny as a nationally known stage and nightclub comedian. I don’t see any reason why old Chicago Red would mind me telling that he is Redd Foxx.
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Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
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AT THE VOIR dire the judge asks all the potential jurors to swear that even if they regularly watch CSI, Law & Order, Cold Case Files, or any other television show featuring forensic science and criminal justice, that they have a firm grasp on the difference between television—even reality television—and reality itself, in which we are presumably now mired. One potential juror with several small children says that won’t be a problem for her, because she mostly watches the Cartoon Network; the judge quips that an afternoon spent with the Cartoon Network provides as much or more information about the criminal justice system as a full season of Law & Order.
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Maggie Nelson (The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial)
“
We’re talking about them as athletes, rather than some of the conversations we had in ’99: My god, who are these women? They’re kind of hot!” Julie Foudy said. After the team won in 1999, the players turned into one-of-a-kind heroes, pioneers, and role models overnight. Many people rooted for them as a larger statement about women in sports. But by 2015, the players of the national team were athletes that America grew to love simply as athletes. If fans were going to be jubilant about a victory in the 2015 World Cup final, it wouldn’t just be because of some deeper meaning or greater impact—it would be because fans knew these players and wanted them to win. It was evidenced by Alex Morgan’s almost 2 million followers on Twitter, Hope Solo’s autobiography becoming a New York Times bestseller, and Abby Wambach appearing in Gatorade television ads on heavy rotation. No longer did the players need to show up at schools and youth clinics to hand out flyers, like the 1999 team did. The word about the national team was already out. In the team’s three May 2015 send-off games, they sold out every match, drawing capacity crowds at Avaya Stadium, the StubHub Center, and Red Bull Arena. Consider what Foudy told reporters in 1999 after the World Cup win: “It transcends soccer. There’s a bigger message out there: When people tell you no, you just smile and tell them, Yes, I can.” By 2015? Players like Carli Lloyd were talking about world domination. It was all about the soccer—and that, in and of itself, was something special and powerful.
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Caitlin Murray (The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women Who Changed Soccer)
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Whence it came, that, on account of the redness of this pottage, he was, in way of jest, by his contemporaries, called Adom, for the Hebrews call what is red Adom; and this was the name given to the country; but the Greeks gave it a more agreeable pronunciation, and named it Idumea.
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Flavius Josephus (The Antiquities of the Jews: History of the Jewish People from Adam and Eve to Jewish–Roman Wars; Including Author's Autobiography)
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I was at the same time impressed with the falsity of the general idea that Frenchmen are excitable and emotional, and that Germans are calm and phlegmatic. Frenchmen are merely gay and never overwhelmed by their emotions. When they talk loud and fast, it is merely talk, while Germans get worked up and red in the face when sustaining an opinion, and in heated discussions are likely to allow their emotions to sweep them off their feet.
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James Weldon Johnson (The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Illustrated))
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Putting the pastries onto a large tray, I asked Manna if she envisioned the words to her poems in colors. Nabokov writes in his autobiography that he and his mother saw the letters of the alphabet in color, I explained. He says of himself that he is a painterly writer.
The Islamic Republic coarsened my taste in colors, Manna said, fingering the discarded leaves of her roses. I want to wear outrageous colors, like shocking pink or tomato red. I feel too greedy for colors to see them in carefully chosen words of poetry.
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Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books)
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The hardships of the Civil War were forgotten. But we will never forget that each of us was motivated by the firm belief in the justice of the ideas proclaimed by Lenin’s Party in October 1917. British General Knox wrote to his government at that time that it was possible to crush a million-strong Bolshevik army, but when 150 million Russians did not want the whites, and wanted the Reds, it was futile helping the former.
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Georgi K. Zhukov (Marshal of Victory: The Autobiography of General Georgy Zhukov)
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The next day I was in my car driving along the freeway when at a red light another car pulled alongside. A white woman was driving and on the passenger's side, next to me, was a white man. "Malcolm X!" he called out--and when I looked, he stuck his hand out of his car, across at me, grinning. "Do you mind shaking hands with a white man?" Imagine that! Just as the traffic light turned green, I told him, "I don't mind shaking hands with human beings. Are you one?
”
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Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
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She understood that becoming a nun was a lifetime commitment. Testing her daughter’s resolve was wise. The Koehler family together, 1923 First Homes As an adult, I visited Rosie’s first home at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, to get a sense of her early life and that of her famous family. The compact Victorian residence stands three stories tall on a small lot in the Boston suburb. It was easy to picture the young Kennedy children playing in the back yard. Rose Kennedy wrote in Times to Remember, her 1974 autobiography: “It was a nice old wooden-frame house with clapboard siding; seven rooms, plus two small ones in the converted attic, all on a small lot with a few bushes and trees . . . about twenty-five minutes from the center of the city by trolley.” 5 The family home on Beals Street is now the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, run by the National Park Service. From the deep browns and reds of the rugs on the hardwood floors to the homey couch and chairs, the home felt warm and comfortable to me. I suppressed a desire to kick off my sandals and flop on the sofa. The Kennedys’ house on Beals Street, Rosie’s first home But my perspective as a child would have triggered a different impression. I would have whispered to my mother, “They’re rich!” (I’ve since discovered that money isn’t the only measure of wealth. There’s wealth in memories, too.) A lovely grand piano occupies one corner of the Kennedys’ old living room. It was a wedding gift to Rose Kennedy from her uncles, and she delighted in playing her favorite song, “Sweet Adeline,” on it. Although her children took piano lessons, Mrs. Kennedy lamented that her own passion never ignited a similar spark in any of her daughters. She did often ask Rosemary to perform, however. I see an image of Rosemary declaring she couldn’t, her hands stretching awkwardly across the keys. But her mother encouraged Rosie to practice, confident she’d
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Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff (The Missing Kennedy: Rosemary Kennedy and the Secret Bonds of Four Women)
“
I had a crusader cross inked in. I wanted everyone to know I was a Christian. I had it put in red, for blood. I hated the damn savages I'd been fighting. I always will.
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Chris Kyle (American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History)
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objectionable in it, is returned. "The manuscript is an interesting autobiography of a notable Indian, made by himself. There are a number of passages which, from the departmental point of view, are decidedly objectionable. These are found on pages 73, 74, 90, 91, and 97, and are indicated by marginal lines in red. The entire manuscript appears in a way important as showing the Indian side of a prolonged controversy, but it is believed that the document, either in whole or in part, should not
”
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Geronimo (Geronimo's Story of His Life)
Gary Neville (Red: My Autobiography)
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Professor, you are very hard on that young Canadian girl!"
"Hard?" The Professor shrugged, spread his palms. "Art - the girl has 'makings.' It takes red-hot fury to dig 'em up. If I'm harsh it's for her own good. More often than not worth while things hurt. Art's worth while.
”
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Emily Carr (Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr)
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Hitler decided that the party needed a new flag, something striking that would look good both large on a poster and small on a uniform patch. In his autobiography, Mein Kampf, Hitler describes the Nazis’ new flag: “In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work, which as such always has been and always will be anti-Semitic.” The swastika is a centuries-old symbol that, before its use by the Nazis, meant life and good luck.
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Bill O'Reilly (Hitler's Last Days: The Death of the Nazi Regime and the World's Most Notorious Dictator)
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On the front of my arm, I had a crusader cross inked in. I wanted everyone to know I was a Christian. I had it put in in red, for blood. I hated the damn savages I’d been fighting. I always will. They’ve taken so much from me.
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Chris Kyle (American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History)
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But it’s inevitable you’ll lose the plot sometimes playing top-level sport. Everyone wants this perfect world, but the mentality you’ve been engrained with is to fight and scrap for everything, to win every little battle and every little decision. Especially when you are young, you feel like you are fighting against the world. Occasionally you lose your head, even if you wish you wouldn’t. I’m
”
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Gary Neville (Red: My Autobiography)
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many white people simply stopped in their tracks to watch me pass. The drape and the cut of a zoot suit showed to the best advantage if you were tall—and I was over six feet. My conk was fire-red. I was really a clown, but my ignorance made me think I was “sharp.” My knob-toed, orange-colored “kick-up” shoes were nothing but Florsheims, the ghetto’s Cadillac of shoes in those days. (Some shoe companies made these ridiculous styles for sale only in the black ghettoes where ignorant Negroes like me would pay the big-name price for something that we associated with being rich.)
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Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
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Like every boy, I really wanted a pet. But I was allergic to animal hair. I realize having “allergies” doesn’t help my street cred, either. But this might: I ended up living amongst reptiles. That’s cool, right? I first got the idea while lizard hunting with Uncle Frankie when I was 10. We caught a black and yellow-striped garter snake and I kept that for a while. Later, I acquired a six-foot Burmese python and named him Dudley, after Dudley Moore, my co-star in the film Like Father, Like Son. The cast of Growing Pains gave me a red-tailed boa constrictor for my birthday one year and I named that one Glenn, after my cool set teacher. I had another red-tailed boa that I named Springsteen, named for—well, you can probably guess.
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Kirk Cameron (Still Growing: An Autobiography)
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Since most New Yorkers had never heard of Lansing, I would name Detroit. Gradually, I began to be called “Detroit Red”—and it stuck.
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Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
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I am getting the bad feeling that my friends are growing tired of me. I am growing tired of me, too.
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Maggie Nelson (The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial)
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Fear of breakdown is the fear of a breakdown that has already been experienced.
”
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Maggie Nelson (The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial)
“
then he met Herakles and the kingdoms of his life all shifted down a few notches
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Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red)
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The entry to these events is hideously embarrassing. You’re picked up and driven to the venue, where you join a queue of cars some distance away. Someone comes to the window, checks who’s in the car and speaks into a radio. At the appropriate time, your car is allowed to move forward to the drop-off point, and you get out to a barrage of cameras. You then walk the red carpet, where photographers shout at you to look this way and that. It feels very much like being a lesser prize on a game-show conveyor belt. If someone more famous turns up, you’re abandoned, or if you turn up and the person ahead is less famous than you, they abandon them. It all feels coldly brutal, and I genuinely don’t like it, but it’s all part and parcel of going to those events.
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Gary Numan ((R)evolution: The Autobiography)