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

Raymond Carver

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Raymond Carver
Age: 50 †
Born: 1938
Born: May 25
Died: 1988
Died: August 2
Author
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Clatskanie
Oregon
Shows
External
Crafts
Tension
Aware
Effects
Conditions
Fiction
Internals
Movement
Internal

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Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them.
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I am too nervous to eat pie.
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I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.
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A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.
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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.
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There's literary creation and literary business. When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation it didn't otherwise have.
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Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that.
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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.
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When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself.
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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.
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there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.
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You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk.
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That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.
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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.
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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.
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Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.
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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.
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I dressed and went for a walk - determined not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer.
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We knew our days were numbered. We had fouled up our lives and we were getting ready for a shake-up.
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This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.
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