Carver Raymond Quotes & Sayings

Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on. — Raymond Carver

It's akin to style, what I'm talking about, but it isn't style alone. It is the writer's particular and unmistakable signature on everything he writes. It is his world and no other. This is one of the things that distinguishes one writer from another. Not talent. There's plenty of that around. But a writer who has some special way of looking at things and who gives artistic expression to that way of looking: that writer may be around for a time. — Raymond Carver

He wondered if she wondered if he were watching her. — Raymond Carver

A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don't matter a damn anymore. — Raymond Carver

It is August.
My life is going to change. I feel it. — Raymond Carver

Then i don't know I remembered how he was when he was nineteen, the way he looked, running across this field to where his dad sat on a tractor, hand over his eyes, watching Wes run toward him - Chef's House — Raymond Carver

In the beginning, when I was trying to write, I couldn't turn off the outside world to the extent that I can now. — Raymond Carver

If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our hearts or intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly and steadily once more, we'll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, "created of warm blood and nerves" as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life. — Raymond Carver

All of us, all of us, all of us trying to save our immortal souls, some ways seemingly more round about and mysterious than others. We are having a good time here. But hope all will be revealed soon. — Raymond Carver

Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from. — Raymond Carver

My life is going to change. I feel it. — Raymond Carver

That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones. — Raymond Carver

She won't give him back his look. — Raymond Carver

When you live in the dark for so long, you begin to love it. And it loves you back, and isn't that the point? You think, the face turns to the shadows, and just as well. It accepts, it heals, it allows. But it also devours. — Raymond Carver

What good are insights? They only make things worse. — Raymond Carver

But here is the thing. When he gets on me, I suddenly feel I am fat. I feel am terrifically fat, so fat that Rudy is a tiny thing and hardly there at all. — Raymond Carver

A small wax and sawdust log burned on the grate. A carton of five more sat ready on the hearth. He got up from the sofa and put them all in the fireplace. He watched until they flamed. Then he finished his soda and made for the patio door. On the way, he saw the pies lined up on the sideboard. He stacked them in his arms, all six, one for every ten times she had ever betrayed him. — Raymond Carver

Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason
if the worlds are in any way blurred
the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'. — Raymond Carver

The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places. — Raymond Carver

I guess my writing has changed as my life has. — Raymond Carver

I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation. — Raymond Carver

Late Fragment
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth. — Raymond Carver

There is no God, and conversation is a dying art. — Raymond Carver

But dying is for the sweetest ones. And he remembers sweetness, when life was sweet, and sweetly he was given that other lifetime. — Raymond Carver

Beauties" by Anton Chekhov, "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J. D. Salinger, "Brownies" or "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" both by ZZ Packer, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel, "Fat" by Raymond Carver, "Indian Camp — Gabrielle Zevin

I am a cigarette with a body attached to it — Raymond Carver

In his better moments, Mr Baxter is a decent, ordinary guy - a guy you wouldn't mistake for anyone special. But he is special. In my book, he is. For one thing he has a full night's sleep behind him, and he's just embraced his wife before leaving for work. But even before he goes, he's already expected home a set number of hours later. True, in the grander scheme of things, his return will be an event of small moment - but an event nonetheless. — Raymond Carver

Something's died in me," she goes. "It took a long time for it to do it, but it's dead. You've killed something, just like you'd took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now. — Raymond Carver

But I guess even the knights were vessels to someone. Isn't that the way it worked? But then everyone is always a vessel to someone. Isn't that right, Terri? But what I liked about the knights, besides their ladies, was that they had that suit of armor, you know, and they couldn't get hurt very easily. No cars in those days, you know? No drunk teenagers to tear into your ass."
Vassals," Terri said.
What?" Mel said.
Vassals," Terri said. "They were called vassals. — Raymond Carver

Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out that his wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what was making him feel bad. Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife. — Raymond Carver

The men who began their life's work on [the cathedrals], they never lived to see the completion of their work. — Raymond Carver

He seemed full of some goodness she didn't understand — Raymond Carver

My lungs are thick with the smoke of your absence. — Raymond Carver

The light was draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from. — Raymond Carver

I'm always learning something. Learning never ends. — Raymond Carver

How far would you run with a piece of lead in your heart? — Raymond Carver

There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had. — Raymond Carver

When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself. — Raymond Carver

Drinking's funny. When I look back on it, all of our important decisions have been figured out when we were drinking. Even when we talked about having to cut back on drinking, we'd be sitting at the kitchen table or out at the picnic table with a six-pack or whiskey. — Raymond Carver

I don't fire up the prose. I just tell it straight and don't fool around with it. — Raymond Carver

In short, everything about his life was different for him at the bottom of that well. — Raymond Carver

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. — Raymond Carver

Grief"

Woke up early this morning and from my bed
looked far across the Strait to see
a small boat moving through the choppy water,
a single running light on. Remembered
my friend who used to shout
his dead wife's name from hilltops
around Perugia. Who set a plate
for her at his simple table long after
she was gone. And opened the windows
so she could have fresh air. Such display
I found embarrassing. So did his other
friends. I couldn't see it.
Not until this morning. — Raymond Carver

Maybe once, maybe years ago, I was a different kind of human being. I've forgotten, I don't know for sure. — Raymond Carver

All this, all of this love we're talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I'm wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don't know anything, and I'm the first one to admit it. — Raymond Carver

Nabokov, Heinrich von Kleist, Raymond Carver, Jane Bowles, James Baldwin, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant - the list goes on and on. They are the teachers to whom I go, the authorities I consult, the models that still help to inspire me with the energy and courage it takes to sit down at a desk each day and resume the process of learning, anew, to write. — Francine Prose

He left through the patio door. He was not certain, but he thought he had proved something. He hoped he had made something clear. The thing was, they had to have a serious talk soon. There were things that needed talking about, important things that had to be discussed. They'd talk again. Maybe after the holidays were over and things got back to normal. He'd tell her the goddamn ashtray was a goddamn dish, for example. — Raymond Carver

Remember Haydn's 104 symphonies. Not all of them were great. But there were 104 of them. — Raymond Carver

Write what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets? — Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver is good. I think he'll be appreciated more and more. He's an easy writer to imitate. — Leslie Fiedler

I don't know why, but I suddenly felt a long way away from everybody I had known and loved when I was a girl. I missed people. For a minute I stood there and wished I could get back to that time. Then with my next thought I understood clearly that I couldn't do that. No. But it came to me then that my life did not remotely resemble the life I thought I'd have when I had been young and looking ahead to things. — Raymond Carver

But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window
maybe rearrange all the furniture. — Raymond Carver

From a literary standpoint, I've been loving Raymond Carver's short stories, William Carlos Williams' poems, Richard Siken's 'Crush', John Fante, and Jim Harrison's book of ghazals. I love film and photography too, so many of my songs are very image rich from those influences. — Greta Salpeter

And certain things around us will change, become easier or harder, one thing or the other, but nothing will ever really be any different. I believe that. We have made our decisions, our lives have been set in motion, and they will go on and on until they stop. But if that is true, then what? I mean, what if you believe that, but you keep it covered up, until one day something happens that should change something, but then you see nothing is going to change after all. What then? Meanwhile, the people around you continue to talk and act as if you were the same person as yesterday, or last night, or five minutes before, but you are really undergoing a crisis, your heart feels damaged ... — Raymond Carver

That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window. — Raymond Carver

My circumstances of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction necessitated the short story form. — Raymond Carver

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. — Raymond Carver

Art doesn't have to do anything. It just has to be there for the fierce pleasure we take in doing it. — Raymond Carver

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. — Raymond Carver

That's right,' Mel said. 'Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the name of love. Or whatever the fuck it was they fought over in those days.'
Same things we fight over these days,' Terri said.
Laura said, 'Nothing's changed. — Raymond Carver

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

What's there to tell? The people over there embrace for a minute, and then they go inside the house together. They leave the light burning. Then they remember, and it goes out. — Raymond Carver

I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been. — Raymond Carver

There is in the soul a desire for not thinking.
For being still. Coupled with this
a desire to be strict, yes, and rigorous.
But the soul is also a smooth son of a bitch,
not always trustworthy. And I forgot that. — Raymond Carver

He did not know what to do. Not just now, he thought, not just in this, not just about this, today and tomorrow, but every day on the earth. — Raymond Carver

They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving. — Raymond Carver

The fiction I'm most interested in has lines of reference to the real world. — Raymond Carver

It's something that I feel I know about, relationships between men and women. I like to write from the woman's point of view now and again, to get inside her head, to feel what she's feeling. — Raymond Carver

What do any of us really know about love? — Raymond Carver

One more nice thing about short stories is that you can create a story out of the smallest details -an idea that springs up in your mind, a word, an image, whatever. In most cases it's like jazz improvisation, with the story taking me where it wants to. And another good point is that with short stories you don't have to worry about failing. If the idea doesn't work out the way you hoped it would, you just shrug your shoulders and tell yourself that they can't all be winners. Even with masters of the genre like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Carver -even Anton Chekhov- not every short story is a masterpiece. I find this a great comfort. You can learn from your mistakes (in other words, those you can't call complete success) and use that in the next story you write. — Haruki Murakami

It was [John Gardner's] conviction that if the words in the story were blurred because of the author's insensitivity, carelessness, or sentimentality, then the story suffered from a tremendous handicap. But there was something even worse and something that must be avoided at all costs: if the words and the sentiments were dishonest, the author was faking it, writing about things he didn't care about or believe in, then nobody could ever care anything about it. — Raymond Carver

All over the world great writers were dying young: Italo Calvino, Raymond Carver, and now here was Angela wrestling with the Reaper. A fatwa was not the only way to die. There were older types of death sentence that still worked very well. — Salman Rushdie

I'm moving to Nevada. Either there or kill myself. — Raymond Carver

Writers will be judged by what they write. — Raymond Carver

She serves me a piece of it a few minutes
out of the oven. A little steam rises
from the slits on top. Sugar and spice -
cinnamon - burned into the crust.
But she's wearing these dark glasses
in the kitchen at ten o'clock
in the morning - everything nice -
as she watches me break off
a piece, bring it to my mouth,
and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen,
in winter. I fork the pie in
and tell myself to stay out of it.
She says she loves him. No way
could it be worse. — Raymond Carver

You have to have been in love to write poetry. — Raymond Carver

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this. — Raymond Carver

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

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

It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love. — Raymond Carver

I read a lot of short fiction, like Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver and Wells Tower. — Lorde

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

I am really into how words sound out loud, so I was always the kid who would, like, read the page of the book to herself in her room over and over and over. And Raymond Carver is great for that. Tobias Wolff is an author who is really good for that as well. — Lorde

I hate tricks. At the first sign of a trick or gimmick in a piece of fiction, a cheap trick or even an elaborate trick, I tend to look for cover. Tricks are ultimately boring, and I get bored easily, which may go along with my not having much of an attention span. But extremely clever chi-chi writing, or just plain tomfoolery writing, puts me to sleep. Writers don't need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing- a sunset or an old shoe- in absolute and simple amazement. — Raymond Carver

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. — Raymond Carver

This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world. — Raymond Carver

And did you get what you wanted from this life even so? i did. — Raymond Carver

You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk. — Raymond Carver

Why don't you kids dance? he decided to say, and then said it. "Why don't you dance? — Raymond Carver

I crack the other egg.
Surely we have diminished one another. — Raymond Carver

It's possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things
a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring
with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader's spine
the source of artistic delight, as Nabokov would have it. That's the kind of writing that most interests me. — Raymond Carver

Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications. — Raymond Carver

I am too nervous to eat pie. — Raymond Carver

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

There is no answer. It's okay. But even if it wasn't okay, what am I supposed to do? — Raymond Carver

It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things - a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring - with immense, even startling power. — Raymond Carver

It's not a terribly original thing to say, but I love Raymond Carver. For one thing, he's fun to read out loud. — Ira Glass

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. — Raymond Carver

Why do you keep saying that " he asked in response "Apples and oranges aren't that different really. I mean they're both fruit. Their weight is extremely similar. They both contain acidic elements. They're both roughly spherical. They serve the same social purpose. With the possible exception of a tangerine I can't think of anything more similar to an orange than an apple. If I was having lunch with a man who was eating an apple and-while I was looking away-he replaced that apple with an orange I doubt I'd even notice. So how is this a metaphor for difference I could understand if you said 'That's like comparing apples and uranium ' or 'That's like comparing apples with baby wolverines ' or 'That's like comparing apples with the early work of Raymond Carver ' or 'That's like comparing apples with hermaphroditic ground sloths.' Those would all be valid examples of profound disparity. — Chuck Klosterman

When I'm fishing, I feel guilty that I'm not writing, and when I'm writing, I feel guilty that I'm not fishing. But when push comes to shove, I'll always take the writing. — Raymond Carver