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Ciaran Carson Quotes

There's a whole language out there, and one's role as a writer is to stumble around in it.

There's a whole language out there, and one's role as a writer is to stumble around in it.

Ciaran Carson
Roles, Language, Whole
"A life in poetry: Ciaran Carson". Interview With Aida Edemariam, www.theguardian.com. January 16, 2009.

Where am I coming from? Where am I going? A fusillade of question marks.

Ciaran Carson
Mark, Question Mark
Ciaran Carson (2015). “The Ballad of HMS Belfast”, p.14, Pan Macmillan

I am reminded, now, of Leonardo's advice to painters: You should fix your eyes, he says, on certain walls stained with damp. You will see in these the likenesses of divine landscapes, adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, extensive plains; and you will see there battles and strange figures engaged in violent actions. For in such walls the same thing happens as in the sound of church bells, in whose reverberations you may find every word imaginable.

Ciaran Carson
Wall, Eye, Church Bells
Ciaran Carson (2001). “Shamrock Tea”, Granta Books

How do you say a thing at all, at the end of the day? How do you say what's in your mind? And as soon as you say what you actually have in mind, it's wrong, isn't it?

Ciaran Carson
Mind, The End Of The Day, Ends
"A life in poetry: Ciaran Carson". Interview with Aida Edemariam, www.theguardian.com. January 16, 2009.

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