Quote

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.

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
Writing
Admire
Work
Writers
Like
Whose
Dead
Read
Living
Wells
Well
Extent

More quotes by Raymond Carver

Image
There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?
Raymond Carver
Image
I guess my writing has changed as my life has.
Raymond Carver
Image
I am too nervous to eat pie.
Raymond Carver
Image
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.
Raymond Carver
Image
You have to have been in love to write poetry.
Raymond Carver
Image
What good are insights? They only make things worse.
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
Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
Raymond Carver
Image
When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself.
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
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.
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
I dressed and went for a walk - determined not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer.
Raymond Carver
Image
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
Image
I am a cigarette with a body attached to it
Raymond Carver
Image
Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.
Raymond Carver
Image
Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.
Raymond Carver
Image
A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.
Raymond Carver
Image
The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.
Raymond Carver
Image
Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that.
Raymond Carver