Carson Cistulli

Carson Cistulli (born 23 December 1979) is an American poet and journalist. He is the author of Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated, A Century of Enthousiasm, and Assorted Fictions.

Carson Cistulli in 2007

Quotes

• I read a book not to find its meaning, but to find my happiness.
  • Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated (2006)

• Day 468—said the word ‘finger’ until it no longer made sense. Now, looking at my fingers I have no idea what they are, / except they’re wildly useful / for writing letters to my earliest ancestors
  • Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated (2006)

• I've never met a very memorable cobbler.
  • Assorted Fictions (2006)

• Many people say, “Who's my doppelganger?” when maybe / they should ask, “Whose doppelganger am I?”
  • Assorted Fictions (2006)

• Those activities at which you excel with no effort at all—those are the ones you ought to pursue to the detriment of others.
  • A Century of Enthusiasm (2007)

• Enthusiasm is achieved chiefly by means of provocations. In these cases, something inside of us resonates vibrantly with something outside. / The form of the provocation—be it book, music, sporting event, conversation—matters insofar as it might help to us find these sources of resonance.
  • A Century of Enthusiasm (2007)

• She put snow on the mountain's / peak for me and took the Gallup Poll of my imagination. / She is both the V-Hold and popular fiction of my life. I write / her letters daily, which I'm then prompted to discard. She / engineered several corporate mergers until I couldn't resist / temptation.
  • A Century of Enthusiasm (2007)

• Woody Allen says at the end of Annie Hall that we’re always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it’s so difficult in real life [...] if we can accept Allen’s as a definition of art, then sabermetrics is absolutely an art. And, just as Kalkman notes, it’s an art whose practitioners are bent on seeing justice done — in baseball, if nowhere else.
  • The Long Hello: Some Notes on Luck (2009)

• If a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around to hear it, it still very probably makes a sound. A baseball game that’s played with no one around to watch it, though — that’s a different proposition.
  • Hell Isn’t (Necessarily) Other People (2010)

• Race ain’t nothing but a number.
  • The New Enthusiast - Selected Aphorisms #78 (2011)

External links

• NPR/WFCR Interview - Tina Antolini interviews Carson Cistulli
• Official Twitter account