Quote

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.

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
Water
Death
Rising
Everything
Behave
Matter
Matters
Time
Short
Life
Question
World
Face
Faces

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There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.
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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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You have to have been in love to write poetry.
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Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.
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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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Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on.
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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 think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.
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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 God, and conversation is a dying art.
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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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Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.
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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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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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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.
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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'm always learning something. Learning never ends.
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