Quote

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
Aware
Effects
Conditions
Fiction
Internals
Movement
Internal
Shows
External
Crafts
Tension

More quotes by Raymond Carver

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There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.
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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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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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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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What good are insights? They only make things worse.
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She won't give him back his look.
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There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?
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Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.
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Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.
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In the beginning, when I was trying to write, I couldnt turn off the outside world to the extent that I can now.
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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.
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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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Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.
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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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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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My heart is broken,” she goes. “It’s turned to a piece of stone. I’m no good. That’s what’s as bad as anything, that I’m no good anymore.
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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
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You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?
Raymond Carver
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The smooth stones you pick up and examine under the moon's light have been made blue from the sea. Next morning when you pull them from your trouser pocket, they are still blue.
Raymond Carver
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The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.
Raymond Carver