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You have to have been in love to write poetry.

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
Poetry
Write
Writing
Love

More quotes by Raymond Carver

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I guess my writing has changed as my life has.
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Anyone can express himself or herself, but what writers and poets want to do in their work, more than simply express themselves, is communicate.
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She won't give him back his look.
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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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Don’t complain, don’t explain.
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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.
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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.
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This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.
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Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.
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A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.
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There is no God, and conversation is a dying art.
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Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.
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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.
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Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.
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I am a cigarette with a body attached to it
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Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that.
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Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
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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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In the beginning, when I was trying to write, I couldnt turn off the outside world to the extent that I can now.
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Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.
Raymond Carver