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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

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

More quotes by Raymond Carver

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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.
Raymond Carver
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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
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Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.
Raymond Carver
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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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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
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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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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
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A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.
Raymond Carver
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I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.
Raymond Carver
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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.
Raymond Carver
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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.
Raymond Carver
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I am a cigarette with a body attached to it
Raymond Carver
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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.
Raymond Carver
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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.
Raymond Carver
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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
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She won't give him back his look.
Raymond Carver
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What good are insights? They only make things worse.
Raymond Carver
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Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
Raymond Carver
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Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that.
Raymond Carver
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There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?
Raymond Carver