Quote

The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.

Raymond Carver

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Raymond Carver
Age: 50 †
Born: 1938
Born: May 25
Died: 1988
Died: August 2
Author
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Clatskanie
Oregon
Fiction
Lines
Real
World
Reference
Interested

More quotes by Raymond Carver

Image
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
Image
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.
Raymond Carver
Image
My life is going to change. I feel it.
Raymond Carver
Image
I guess my writing has changed as my life has.
Raymond Carver
Image
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
Image
You have to have been in love to write poetry.
Raymond Carver
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself.
Raymond Carver
Image
You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?
Raymond Carver
Image
I am a cigarette with a body attached to it
Raymond Carver
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them.
Raymond Carver
Image
Don’t complain, don’t explain.
Raymond Carver
Image
There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?
Raymond Carver
Image
This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.
Raymond Carver
Image
Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.
Raymond Carver
Image
I am too nervous to eat pie.
Raymond Carver