Raymond Carver Quotes - Page 2

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• There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I'd like to know. I wish someone could tell me.

  Raymond Carver

  Hate, Wife, Wish

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories”, p.162, Vintage

  58 Copy quote

• But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window--maybe rearrange all the furniture.

  Raymond Carver

  Worry, Anxiety, Legs

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories”, p.405, Vintage

  64 Copy quote

• Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.

  Raymond Carver

  Morning, Poetry, Early Morning

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Where Water Comes Together with Other Water: Poems”, p.29, Vintage

  16 Copy quote

• There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?

  Raymond Carver

  Life, Answers, Okay

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Cathedral”, p.121, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, World, Very Good

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories”, p.23, Vintage

  28 Copy quote

• Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.

  Raymond Carver

  Philosophy, Discovery, Class

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?”, p.190, Vintage

  33 Copy quote

• Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.

  Raymond Carver

  Past, Night, Talking

  Raymond Carver (2015). “All of Us: The Collected Poems”, p.121, Vintage

  17 Copy quote

• A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don't matter a damn anymore.

  Raymond Carver

  Men, Matter, Damn

  Raymond Carver (2015). “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, p.39, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• Something’s died in me,” she goes. “It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something, just like you’d took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now.

  Raymond Carver

  Long, Dirt, Like You

  Raymond Carver (2015). “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, p.25, Vintage

  16 Copy quote

• Booze takes a lot of time and effort if you're going to do a good job with it.

  Raymond Carver

  Jobs, Effort, Good Job

  Raymond Carver (2015). “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, p.27, Vintage

  30 Copy quote

• I am a cigarette with a body attached to it

  Raymond Carver

  Body, Cigarette

  Raymond Carver, Marshall Bruce Gentry, William L. Stull (1990). “Conversations with Raymond Carver”, p.10, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  29 Copy quote

• You're...writing for other writers to an extent-the dead writers whose work you admire, as well as the living writers you like to read.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, Admire, Wells

  26 Copy quote

• Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.

  Raymond Carver

  Fiction, Movement, Crafts

  9 Copy quote

• What good are insights? They only make things worse.

  Raymond Carver

  Insight

  21 Copy quote

• This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.

  Raymond Carver

  World, Awful, Happens

  Raymond Carver (2015). “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, p.25, Vintage

  16 Copy quote

• I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.

  Raymond Carver

  Memories, Believe, Laughing

  Raymond Carver (1989). “Elephant and other stories”

  26 Copy quote

• Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that.

  Raymond Carver

  Despair, Littles, Said

  Raymond Carver, Marshall Bruce Gentry, William L. Stull (1990). “Conversations with Raymond Carver”, p.52, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  17 Copy quote

• and did you get what you wanted from this life even so? i did.

  Raymond Carver

  This Life, Wanted

  Raymond Carver, Marshall Bruce Gentry, William L. Stull (1990). “Conversations with Raymond Carver”, p.18, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  10 Copy quote

• A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so.

  Raymond Carver

  Men, Doors, Hands

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Beginners”, p.15, Vintage

  15 Copy quote

• A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

  Raymond Carver

  Imagination, Temptation, Fiction

  Raymond Carver, Marshall Bruce Gentry, William L. Stull (1990). “Conversations with Raymond Carver”, p.41, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  6 Copy quote

• Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.

  Raymond Carver

  Thinking, Watches, Honey

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories”, p.396, Vintage

  27 Copy quote

• But he stays by the window, remembering that life. They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else—the cold and where he'd go in it—was outside, for a while anyway.

  Raymond Carver

  Tears, Cold, Remember

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories”, p.179, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.

  Raymond Carver

  Real, Fiction, World

  Raymond Carver, Bob Adelman (1994). “Carver Country: The World of Raymond Carver”, Arcade Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• I’d like to go out in the front yard and shout something. “None of this is worth it!” That’s what I’d like people to hear.

  Raymond Carver

  People, Yards, Fronts

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories”, p.407, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read. Fought against it for a minute. Then looked out the window at the rain. And gave over. Put myself entirely in the keep of this rainy morning. Would I live my life over again? Make the same unforgivable mistakes? Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

  Raymond Carver

  Morning, Mistake, Lying

  Raymond Carver (2015). “All of Us: The Collected Poems”, p.135, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

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