Quote

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

Raymond Carver

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Raymond Carver
Age: 50 †
Born: 1938
Born: May 25
Died: 1988
Died: August 2
Author
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Clatskanie
Oregon
Writer
Makes
Great
Writing
Even
Every
Good
Specifications
World
According

More quotes by Raymond Carver

Image
My life is going to change. I feel it.
Raymond Carver
Image
Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn't hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.
Raymond Carver
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.
Raymond Carver
Image
All of us, all of us, all of us trying to save our immortal souls, some ways seemingly more round about and mysterious than others. We are having a good time here. But hope all will be revealed soon.
Raymond Carver
Image
I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.
Raymond Carver
Image
You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk.
Raymond Carver
Image
She won't give him back his look.
Raymond Carver
Image
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
Image
Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
Raymond Carver
Image
I am a cigarette with a body attached to it
Raymond Carver
Image
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
Image
Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.
Raymond Carver
Image
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
Image
Don’t complain, don’t explain.
Raymond Carver
Image
It's strange. You never start out life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief. Or a liar.
Raymond Carver
Image
Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.
Raymond Carver
Image
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
Image
The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.
Raymond Carver