Quote

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.

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
Liars
Intention
Bankrupt
Becoming
Alcoholic
Strange
Thief
Start
Alcoholics
Never
Liar
Life
Thieves
Cheat

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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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Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
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Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.
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Don’t complain, don’t explain.
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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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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.
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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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I am too nervous to eat pie.
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There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.
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I am a cigarette with a body attached to it
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A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house. Except for the chrome hooks, he was an ordinary-looking man of fifty or so.
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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.
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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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Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.
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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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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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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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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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