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Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them.

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
Haydn
Symphonies
Symphony
Remember
Great

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Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.
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I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.
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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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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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You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk.
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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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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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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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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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Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
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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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She won't give him back his look.
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Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.
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I guess my writing has changed as my life has.
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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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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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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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