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
Every
Good
Specifications
World
According
Writer
Makes
Great
Writing
Even

More quotes by Raymond Carver

Image
there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.
Raymond Carver
Image
Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
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
We knew our days were numbered. We had fouled up our lives and we were getting ready for a shake-up.
Raymond Carver
Image
When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself.
Raymond Carver
Image
You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk.
Raymond Carver
Image
I am a cigarette with a body attached to it
Raymond Carver
Image
There's literary creation and literary business. When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation it didn't otherwise have.
Raymond Carver
Image
I dressed and went for a walk - determined not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer.
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
What good are insights? They only make things worse.
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
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
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
Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.
Raymond Carver
Image
There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.
Raymond Carver
Image
There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?
Raymond Carver
Image
That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.
Raymond Carver
Image
A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.
Raymond Carver
Image
You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?
Raymond Carver