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

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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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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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Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.
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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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A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.
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I'm always learning something. Learning never ends.
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The fiction Im most interested in has lines of reference to the real world.
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Don’t complain, don’t explain.
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She won't give him back his look.
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My life is going to change. I feel it.
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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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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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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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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 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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You have to have been in love to write poetry.
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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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I guess my writing has changed as my life has.
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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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