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
Shows
External
Crafts
Tension
Aware
Effects
Conditions
Fiction
Internals
Movement
Internal

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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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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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What good are insights? They only make things worse.
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You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk.
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Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.
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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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Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
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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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Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that.
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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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The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.
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My life is going to change. I feel 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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Don’t complain, don’t explain.
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I am a cigarette with a body attached to it
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Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.
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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.
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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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There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?
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