Raymond Carver Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

• It's akin to style, what I'm talking about, but it isn't style alone. It is the writer's particular and unmistakable signature on everything he writes. It is his world and no other. This is one of the things that distinguishes one writer from another. Not talent. There's plenty of that around. But a writer who has some special way of looking at things and who gives artistic expression to that way of looking: that writer may be around for a time.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, Expression, Talking

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose”, p.99, Vintage

  32 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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 think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, Thinking, Stories

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories”, p.27, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• I dressed and went for a walk - determined not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer.

  Raymond Carver

  Journey, Hiking, Return

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Ultramarine: Poems”, p.12, Vintage

  15 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

  Raymond Carver

  Insight

  21 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, Imagination, Littles

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

  8 Copy quote

Page 2 of 4

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin