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

More quotes by Raymond Carver

Image
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.
Raymond Carver
Image
Don’t complain, don’t explain.
Raymond Carver
Image
I guess my writing has changed as my life has.
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
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
Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.
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
A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.
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
You have to have been in love to write poetry.
Raymond Carver
Image
The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.
Raymond Carver
Image
We knew our days were numbered. We had fouled up our lives and we were getting ready for a shake-up.
Raymond Carver
Image
You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?
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
Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.
Raymond Carver
Image
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.
Raymond Carver
Image
Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.
Raymond Carver
Image
That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.
Raymond Carver
Image
There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.
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