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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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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.
Raymond Carver
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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.
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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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What good are insights? They only make things worse.
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When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself.
Raymond Carver
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The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.
Raymond Carver
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There is no God, and conversation is a dying art.
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My life is going to change. I feel it.
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.
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I am a cigarette with a body attached to it
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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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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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A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.
Raymond Carver
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Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
Raymond Carver