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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.

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
Express
Communicate
Writers
Poet
Simply
Anyone
Writing
Work
Poets

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What good are insights? They only make things worse.
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There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.
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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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When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself.
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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.
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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.
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You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?
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You have to have been in love to write poetry.
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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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But he stays by the window, remembering that life. They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else—the cold and where he'd go in it—was outside, for a while anyway.
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Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them.
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I dressed and went for a walk - determined not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer.
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I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.
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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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I am a cigarette with a body attached to it
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There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?
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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.
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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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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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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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