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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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Raymond Carver
Age: 50 †
Born: 1938
Born: May 25
Died: 1988
Died: August 2
Author
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Clatskanie
Oregon
Little
Approach
Many
Danger
Great
Fiction
Least
Imagination
Autobiographical
Become
Autobiography
Littles
Temptation
Best
Writers

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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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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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There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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There is no God, and conversation is a dying art.
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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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Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
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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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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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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.
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The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.
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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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Fiction shows the external effects of internal conditions. Be aware of the tension between internal and external movement.
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there isn't enough of anything as long as we live. But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance prevails.
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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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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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