Quote

A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

Raymond Carver

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Raymond Carver
Age: 50 †
Born: 1938
Born: May 25
Died: 1988
Died: August 2
Author
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Clatskanie
Oregon
Autobiography
Imagination
Littles
Best
Little
Writing

More quotes by Raymond Carver

Image
I dressed and went for a walk - determined not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer.
Raymond Carver
Image
Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them.
Raymond Carver
Image
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.
Raymond Carver
Image
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.
Raymond Carver
Image
There's literary creation and literary business. When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation it didn't otherwise have.
Raymond Carver
Image
The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.
Raymond Carver
Image
Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.
Raymond Carver
Image
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
Image
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.
Raymond Carver
Image
You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk.
Raymond Carver
Image
What good are insights? They only make things worse.
Raymond Carver
Image
I guess my writing has changed as my life has.
Raymond Carver
Image
there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.
Raymond Carver
Image
Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
Raymond Carver
Image
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
Image
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.
Raymond Carver
Image
You have to have been in love to write poetry.
Raymond Carver
Image
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.
Raymond Carver
Image
I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.
Raymond Carver
Image
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.
Raymond Carver