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Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. I like that.

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
Wrote
Despair
Hope
Littles
Little
Without
Every
Like

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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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There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do?
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There is no God, and conversation is a dying art.
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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'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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You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk.
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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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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 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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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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Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.
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A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.
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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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Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them.
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It's strange. You never start out life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief. Or a liar.
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I guess my writing has changed as my life has.
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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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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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Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.
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