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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
Work
Writers
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Whose
Dead
Read
Living
Wells
Well
Extent
Writing
Admire

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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Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.
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.
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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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I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.
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I guess my writing has changed as my life has.
Raymond Carver
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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.
Raymond Carver
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Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.
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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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I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.
Raymond Carver
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I dressed and went for a walk - determined not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer.
Raymond Carver
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Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.
Raymond Carver
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We knew our days were numbered. We had fouled up our lives and we were getting ready for a shake-up.
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.
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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
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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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Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them.
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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Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.
Raymond Carver
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That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.
Raymond Carver