Quote

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

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
Least
Imagination
Autobiographical
Become
Autobiography
Littles
Temptation
Best
Writers
Little
Approach
Many
Danger
Great
Fiction

More quotes by 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
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
I am too nervous to eat pie.
Raymond Carver
Image
Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.
Raymond Carver
Image
My life is going to change. I feel it.
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
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.
Raymond Carver
Image
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.
Raymond Carver
Image
Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
Raymond Carver
Image
Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.
Raymond Carver
Image
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
Image
There's literary creation and literary business. When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation it didn't otherwise have.
Raymond Carver
Image
I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.
Raymond Carver
Image
There is no God, and conversation is a dying art.
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
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
The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.
Raymond Carver
Image
She won't give him back his look.
Raymond Carver
Image
There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.
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